

Glass 

Book 

BEQUEST OF 

ALBERT ADSIT CLEMONS 
(Not available for exchange) 











JOHN SILENCE 


*■ 


JOHN SILENCE 

Physician Extraordinary 


BY 


ALGERNON BLACKWOOD 

>! 

AUTHOR OP 

“THE LISTENER” “THE EMPTY HOUSE” ETC. 


NEW YORK 
BRENTANO’S 
1910 


TZ 3 

*'£> 56 8 3 

Zo 

£C 


TO 


M. L. W. 

THE ORIGINAL OF JOHN SILENCE 
AND 

MY COMPANION IN MANY ADVENTURES 


Bequest 

Albert Adsit Clemons 
Aug. 24, 1938 
(Not available for exchange) 



• * 
* • 


First Printed . 
Reprinted . . 

Reprinted . . 


A ugust 1908 
December 1908 
March 1910 


CONTENTS 


A Psychical Invasion 

CASE 

I 

. 

. 

PAGE 

. I 


CASE 

II 




Ancient Sorceries 

• 

• 

• 

ft 

. 75 


CASE 

III 




The Nemesis of Fire 

• 

• 

* 

• 

. 143 


CASE 

IV 




Secret Worship . 

• 

• 

* 

t 

* 245 


CASE 

V 




The Camp of the Dog 

. 

. 

« 

• 

• 295 


v 


CASE I 

A PSYCHICAL INVASION 



JOHN SILENCE 


CASE I 

A PSYCHICAL INVASION 

“ And what is it makes you think I could be of 
use in this particular case?” asked Dr. John Silence, 
looking across somewhat sceptically at the Swedish 
lady in the chair facing him. 

“ Your sympathetic heart and your knowledge of 
occultism ” 

“ Oh, please — that dreadful word ! ” he inter- 
rupted, holding up a finger with a gesture of im- 
patience. 

“ Well, then,” she laughed, “ your wonderful clair- 
voyant gift and your trained psychic knowledge of 
the processes by which a personality may be dis- 
integrated and destroyed — these strange studies 
you’ve been experimenting with all these years 

“ If it’s only a case of multiple personality I must 
really cry off,” interrupted the doctor again hastily, 
a bored expression in his eyes. 

“ It’s not that ; now, please, be serious, for I want 
your help,” she said ; “ and if I choose my words 

i 


2 


JOHN SILENCE 


poorly you must be patient with my ignorance. The 
case I know will interest you, and no one else could 
deal with it so well. In fact, no ordinary professional 
man could deal with it at all, for I know of no 
treatment or medicine that can restore a lost sense 
of humour ! ” 

“You begin to interest me with your ‘case/” he 
replied, and made himself comfortable to listen. 

Mrs. Sivendson drew a sigh of contentment as she 
watched him go to the tube and heard him tell the 
servant he was not to be disturbed. 

“ I believe you have read my thoughts already,” 
she said ; “ your intuitive knowledge of what goes on 
in other people’s minds is positively uncanny.” 

Her friend shook his head and smiled as he 
drew his chair up to a convenient position and 
prepared to listen attentively to what she had to 
say. He closed his eyes, as he always did when he 
wished to absorb the real meaning of a recital that 
might be inadequately expressed, for by this method 
he found it easier to set himself in tune with the 
living thoughts that lay behind the broken words. 

By his friends John Silence was regarded as 
an eccentric, because he was rich by accident, and 
by choice — a doctor. That a man of independent 
means should devote his time to doctoring, chiefly 
doctoring folk who could not pay, passed their com- 
prehension entirely. The native nobility of a soul 
whose first desire was to help those who could not 
help themselves, puzzled them. After that, it irritated 
them, and, greatly to his own satisfaction, they left 
him to his own devices. 

Dr. Silence was a free-lance, though, among 
doctors, having neither consulting-room, book- 


A PSYCHICAL INVASION 


3 


keeper, nor professional manner. He took no fees, 
being at heart a genuine philanthropist, yet at the 
same time did no harm to his fellow-practitioners, 
because he only accepted unremunerative cases, 
and cases that interested him for some very special 
reason. He argued that the rich could pay, and 
the very poor could avail themselves of organised 
charity, but that a very large class of ill-paid, 
self-respecting workers, often followers of the arts, 
could not afford the price of a week’s comforts 
merely to be told to travel. And it was these he 
desired to help : cases often requiring special and 
patient study — things no doctor can give for a 
guinea, and that no one would dream of expecting 
him to give. 

But there was another side to his personality and 
practice, and one with which we are now more 
directly concerned ; for the cases that especially 
appealed to him were of no ordinary kind, but rather 
of that intangible, elusive, and difficult nature best 
described as psychical afflictions ; and, though he 
would have been the last person himself to approve 
of the title, it was beyond question that he was known 
more or less generally as the “ Psychic Doctor.” 

In order to grapple with cases of this peculiar kind, 
he had submitted himself to a long and severe 
training, at once physical, mental, and spiritual. 
What precisely this training had been, or where 
undergone, no one seemed to know, — for he never 
spoke of it, as, indeed, he betrayed no single other 
characteristic of the charlatan, — but the fact that it 
had involved a total disappearance from the world 
for five years, and that after he returned and began his 
singular practice no one ever dreamed of applying 


4 


JOHN SILENCE 


to him the so easily acquired epithet of quack, spoke 
much for the seriousness of his strange quest and 
also for the genuineness of his attainments. 

For the modern psychical researcher he felt the 
calm tolerance of the “ man who knows.” There was 
a trace of pity in his voice — contempt he never 
showed — when he spoke of their methods. 

“This classification of results is uninspired work 
at best,” he said once to me, when I had been 
his confidential assistant for some years. “It 
leads nowhere, and after a hundred years will lead 
nowhere. It is playing with the wrong end of a 
rather dangerous toy. Far better, it would be, to 
examine the causes, and then the results would so 
easily slip into place and explain themselves. For 
the sources are accessible, and open to all who have 
the courage to lead the life that alone makes practical 
investigation safe and possible.” 

And towards the question of clairvoyance, too, his 
attitude was significantly sane, for he knew how 
extremely rare the genuine power was, and that what 
is commonly called clairvoyance is nothing more 
than a keen power of visualising. 

“It connotes a slightly increased sensibility, noth- 
ing more,” he would say. “ The true clairvoyant de- 
plores his power, recognising that it adds a new horror 
to life, and is in the nature of an affliction. And you 
will find this always to be the real test.” 

Thus it was that John Silence, this singularly 
developed doctor, was able to select his cases with a 
clear knowledge of the difference between mere 
hysterical delusion and the kind of psychical afflic- 
tion that claimed his special powers. It was never 
necessary for him to resort to the cheap mysteries of 


A PSYCHICAL INVASION 


5 

divination ; for, as I have heard him observe, aftei 
the solution of some peculiarly intricate problem — 

“ Systems of divination, from geomancy down to 
reading by tea-leaves, are merely so many methods 
of obscuring the outer vision, in order that the inner 
vision may become open. Once the method is 
mastered, no system is necessary at all.” 

And the words were significant of the methods of 
this remarkable man, the keynote of whose power 
lay, perhaps, more than anything else, in the know- 
ledge, first, that thought can act at a distance, and, 
secondly, that thought is dynamic and can accomplish 
material results. 

“ Learn how to think” he would have expressed it, 
“ and you have learned to tap power at its source” 
To look at — he was now past forty — he was sparely 
built, with speaking brown eyes in which shone the 
light of knowledge and self-confidence, while at the 
same time they made one think of that wondrous 
gentleness seen most often in the eyes of animals. 
A close beard concealed the mouth without disguising 
the grim determination of lips and jaw, and the face 
somehow conveyed an impression of transparency, 
almost of light, so delicately were the features refined 
away. On the fine forehead was that indefinable 
touch of peace that comes from identifying the mind 
with what is permanent in the soul, and letting the 
impermanent slip by without power to wound or 
distress; while, from his manner, — so gentle, quiet, 
sympathetic, — few could have guessed the strength 
of purpose that burned within like a great flame. 

“ I think I should describe it as a psychical case,” 
continued the Swedish lady, obviously trying to 
explain herself very intelligently, “ and just the kind 


6 


JOHN SILENCE 


you like. I mean a case where the cause is hidden 
deep down in some spiritual distress, and ” 

“ But the symptoms first, please, my dear Svenska,” 
he interrupted, with a strangely compelling seriousness 
of manner, “ and your deductions afterwards.” 

She turned round sharply on the edge of her chair 
and looked him in the face, lowering her voice to 
prevent her emotion betraying itself too obviously. 

“ In my opinion there’s only one symptom,” she 
half whispered, as though telling something disagree- 
able — “ fear — simply fear.” 

“ Physical fear ? ” 

“ I think not ; though how can I say ? I think it’s 
a horror in the psychical region. It’s no ordinary 
delusion ; the man is quite sane ; but he lives in 
mortal terror of something ” 

“ I don’t know what you mean by his * psychical 
region,’” said the doctor, with a smile; “though I 
suppose you wish me to understand that his spiritual, 
and not his mental, processes are affected. Anyhow, 
try and tell me briefly and pointedly what you know 
about the man, his symptoms, his need for help, my 
peculiar help, that is, and all that seems vital in the 
case. I promise to listen devotedly.” 

“ I am trying,” she continued earnestly, “ but must 
do so in my own words and trust to your intelligence 
to disentangle as I go along. He is a young author, 
and lives in a tiny house off Putney Heath somewhere. 
He writes humorous stories — quite a genre of his 
own : Pender — you must have heard the name — Felix 
Pender ? Oh, the man had a great gift, and married 
on the strength of it ; his future seemed assured. I 
say ‘ had,’ for quite suddenly his talent utterly failed 
him. Worse, it became transformed into its opposite. 


A PSYCHICAL INVASION 


7 

He can no longer write a line in the old way that 
was bringing him success ” 

Dr. Silence opened his eyes for a second and 
looked at her. 

“ He still writes, then ? The force has not gone ? ” 
he asked briefly, and then closed his eyes again to 
listen. 

“ He works like a fury,” she went on, “ but pro- 
duces nothing” — she hesitated a moment — “noth- 
ing that he can use or sell. His earnings have 
practically ceased, and he makes a precarious living 
by book-reviewing and odd jobs — very odd, some of 
them. Yet, I am certain his talent has not really 
deserted him finally, but is merely ” 

Again Mrs. Sivendson hesitated for the appropriate 
word. 

“In abeyance,” he suggested, without opening his 
eyes. 

“ Obliterated,” she went on, after a moment to 
weigh the word, “ merely obliterated by something 
else ” 

“ By some one else ? ” 

“ I wish I knew. All I can say is that he is 
haunted, and temporarily his sense of humour is 
shrouded — gone — replaced by something dreadful 
that writes other things. Unless something com- 
petent is done, he will simply starve to death. Yet 
he is afraid to go to a doctor for fear of being 
pronounced insane ; and, anyhow, a man can hardly 
ask a doctor to take a guinea to restore a vanished 
sense of humour, can he ? ” 

“ Has he tried any one at all ? ” 

“ Not doctors yet. He tried some clergymen and 
religious people ; but they know so little and have so 


8 


JOHN SILENCE 


little intelligent sympathy. And most of them are 
so busy balancing on their own little pedestals ” 

John Silence stopped her tirade with a gesture. 

“And how is it that you know so much about 
him ? ” he asked gently. 

“ I know Mrs. Pender well — I knew her before she 
married him ” 

“ And is she a cause, perhaps ? ” 

“ Not in the least. She is devoted ; a woman very 
well educated, though without being really intelligent, 
and with so little sense of humour herself that she 
always laughs at the wrong places. But she has 
nothing to do with the cause of his distress; and, 
indeed, has chiefly guessed it from observing him, 
rather than from what little he has told her. And 
he, you know, is a really lovable fellow, hard-working, 
patient — altogether worth saving.” 

Dr. Silence opened his eyes and went over to ring 
for tea. He did not know very much more about 
the case of the humorist than when he first sat down 
to listen; but he realised that no amount of words 
from his Swedish friend would help to reveal the real 
facts. A personal interview with the author himself 
could alone do that. 

“ All humorists are worth saving,” he said with a 
smile, as she poured out tea. “We can’t afford to 
lose a single one in these strenuous days. I will go 
and see your friend at the first opportunity.” 

She thanked him elaborately, effusively, with many 
words, and he, with much difficulty, kept the conversa- 
tion thenceforward strictly to the teapot. 

And, as a result of this conversation, and a little 
more he had gathered by means best known to 
himself and his secretary, he was whizzing in his 


A PSYCHICAL INVASION 


9 


motor-car one afternoon a few days later up the 
Putney Hill to have his first interview with Felix 
Pender, the humorous writer who was the victim of 
some mysterious malady in his “psychical region” 
that had obliterated his sense of the comic and 
threatened to wreck his life and destroy his talent. 
And his desire to help was probably of equal strength 
with his desire to know and to investigate. 

The motor stopped with a deep purring sound, as 
though a great black panther lay concealed within 
its hood, and the doctor — the “psychic doctor,” as he 
was sometimes called — stepped out through the 
gathering fog, and walked across the tiny garden 
that held a blackened fir tree and a stunted laurel 
shrubbery. The house was very small, and it was 
some time before any one answered the bell. Then, 
suddenly, a light appeared in the hall, and he saw 
a pretty little woman standing on the top step begging 
him to come in. She was dressed in grey, and the 
gaslight fell on a mass of deliberately brushed light 
hair. Stuffed, dusty birds, and a shabby array of 
African spears, hung on the wall behind her. A hat- 
rack, with a bronze plate full of very large cards, led 
his eye swiftly to a dark staircase beyond. Mrs. 
Pender had round eyes like a child’s, and she greeted 
him with an effusiveness that barely concealed her 
emotion, yet strove to appear naturally cordial. 
Evidently she had been looking out for his arrival, 
and had outrun the servant girl. She was a little 
breathless. 

“ I hope you’ve not been kept waiting — I think it’s 

most good of you to come ” she began, and then 

stopped sharp when she saw his face in the gaslight. 
There was something in Dr. Silence’s look that did 


10 JOHN SILENCE 

not encourage mere talk. He was in earnest now, if 
ever man was. 

“ Good evening, Mrs. Pender,” he said, with a quiet 
smile that won confidence, yet deprecated unneces- 
sary words, “ the fog delayed me a little. I am glad 
to see you.” 

They went into a dingy sitting-room at the back 
of the house, neatly furnished but depressing. Books 
stood in a row upon the mantelpiece. The fire had 
evidently just been lit. It smoked in great puffs 
into the room. 

“ Mrs. Sivendson said she thought you might be 
able to come,” ventured the little woman again, 
looking up engagingly into his face and betraying 
anxiety and eagerness in every gesture. “But I 
hardly dared to believe it. I think it is really too 
good of you. My husbands case is so peculiar that 
— well, you know, I am quite sure any ordinary 
doctor would say at once the asylum ” 

“ Isn’t he in, then ? ” asked Dr. Silence gently. 

“ In the asylum ? ” she gasped. “ Oh dear, no— 
not yet ! ” 

“ In the house, I meant,” he laughed. 

She gave a great sigh. 

“ He’ll be back any minute now,” she replied, 
obviously relieved to see him laugh ; “ but the fact is, 
we didn’t expect you so early — I mean, my husband 
hardly thought you would come at all.” 

“ I am always delighted to come — when I am 
really wanted, and can be of help,” he said quickly ; 
" and, perhaps, it’s all for the best that your husband 
is out, for now that we are alone you can tell me 
something about his difficulties. So far, you know, 

I have heard very little.” 


A PSYCHICAL INVASION 


1 1 

Her voice trembled as she thanked him, and when 
he came and took a chair close beside her she actually 
had difficulty in finding words with which to begin. 

“In the first place,” she began timidly, and then 
continuing with a nervous incoherent rush of words, 
“ he will be simply delighted that you’ve really come, 
because he said you were the only person he would 
consent to see at all — the only doctor, I mean. But, 
of course, he doesn’t know how frightened I am, or 
how much I have noticed. He pretends with me 
that it’s just a nervous breakdown, and I’m sure he 
doesn’t realise all the odd things I’ve noticed him 
doing. But the main thing, I suppose ” 

“Yes, the main thing, Mrs. Pender,” he said 
encouragingly, noticing her hesitation. 

“ is that he thinks we are not alone in the 

house. That’s the chief thing.” 

“ Tell me more facts — just facts.” 

“It began last summer when I came back from 
Ireland ; he had been here alone for six weeks, and 
I thought him looking tired and queer — ragged and 
scattered about the face, if you know what I mean, 
and his manner worn out. He said he had been 
writing hard, but his inspiration had somehow failed 
him, and he was dissatisfied with his work. His 
sense of humour was leaving him, or changing into 
something else, he said. There was something in 
the house, he declared, that” — she emphasised the 
WO rds — “ prevented his feeling funny.” 

“ Something in the house that prevented his feeling 
funny,” repeated the doctor. “ Ah, now we’re getting 
to the heart of it ! ” 

“ Yes,” she resumed vaguely ; “ that’s what he kept 
saying.” 


12 


JOHN SILENCE 


“ And what was it he didtixdX you thought strange ? * 
he asked sympathetically. “ Be brief, or he may be 
here before you finish.” 

“Very small things, but significant it seemed to 
me. He changed his workroom from the library, as 
we call it, to the sitting-room. He said all his 
characters became wrong and terrible in the library ; 
they altered, so that he felt like writing tragedies — 
vile, debased tragedies, the tragedies of broken souls. 
But now he says the same of the smoking-room, and 
he’s gone back to the library.” 

“ Ah ! ” 

“You see, there’s so little I can tell you,” she went 
on, with increasing speed and countless gestures. “ I 
mean it’s only very small things he does and says 
that are queer. What frightens me is that he 
assumes there is some one else in the house all the 
time — some one I never see. He does not actually 
say so, but on the stairs I’ve seen him standing aside 
to let some one pass ; I’ve seen him open a door to 
let some one in or out ; and often in our bedroom he 
puts chairs about as though for some one else to sit 
in. Oh — oh yes, and once or twice,” she cried — 
“ once or twice ” 

She paused, and looked about her with a startled 
air. 

“Yes?” 

“ Once or twice,” she resumed hurriedly, as though 
she heard a sound that alarmed her, “ I’ve heard him 
running — coming in and out of the rooms breathless 
as if something were after him ” 

The door opened while she was still speaking, 
cutting her words off in the middle, and a man came 
into the room. He was dark and clean-shaven 


A PSYCHICAL INVASION 


13 


sallow rather, with the eyes of imagination, and 
dark hair growing scantily about the temples. He 
was dressed in a shabby tweed suit, and wore an 
untidy flannel collar at the neck. The dominant 
expression of his face was startled — hunted ; an 
expression that might any moment leap into the 
dreadful stare of terror and announce a total loss of 
self-control. 

The moment he saw his visitor a smile spread 
over his worn features, and he advanced to shake 
hands. 

“ I hoped you would come ; Mrs. Sivendson said 
you might be able to find time,” he said simply. 
His voice was thin and reedy. “ I am very glad to 
see you, Dr. Silence. It is ‘ Doctor,’ is it not? ” 

“ Well, I am entitled to the description,” laughed 
the other, “but I rarely get it. You know, I do not 
practise as a regular thing ; that is, I only take cases 
that specially interest me, or ” 

He did not finish the sentence, for the men ex- 
changed a glance of sympathy that rendered it 
unnecessary. 

“ I have heard of your great kindness.” 

“ It’s my hobby,” said the other quickly, “ and my 
privilege.” 

“ I trust you will still think so when you have 
heard what I have to tell you,” continued the author, 
a little wearily. He led the way across the hall into 
the little smoking-room where they could talk freely 
and undisturbed. 

In the smoking-room, the door shut and privacy 
about them, Pender’s attitude changed somewhat, 
and his manner became very grave. The doctor sat 
opposite, where he could watch his face. Already, 


14 


JOHN SILENCE 


he saw, it looked more haggard. Evidently it cost 
him much to refer to his trouble at all. 

“ What I have is, in my belief, a profound spiritual 
affliction,” he began quite bluntly, looking straight 
into the other’s eyes. 

“ I saw that at once,” Dr. Silence said. 

“Yes, you saw that, of course; my atmosphere 
must convey that much to any one with psychic 
perceptions. Besides which, I feel sure from all I’ve 
heard, that you are really a soul-doctor, are you not, 
more than a healer merely of the body ? ” 

“ You think of me too highly,” returned the other ; 
“though I prefer cases, as you know, in which the 
spirit is disturbed first, the body afterwards.” 

“ I understand, yes. Well, I have experienced a 
curious disturbance in — not in my physical region 
primarily. I mean my nerves are all right, and my 
body is all right. I have no delusions exactly, but 
my spirit is tortured by a calamitous fear which first 
came upon me in a strange manner.” 

John Silence leaned forward a moment and took the 
speaker’s hand and held it in his own for a few brief 
seconds, closing his eyes as he did so. He was not 
feeling his pulse, or doing any of the things that 
doctors ordinarily do ; he was merely absorbing into 
himself the main note of the man’s mental condition, 
so as to get completely his own point of view, and 
thus be able to treat his case with true sympathy. 
A very close observer might perhaps have noticed 
that a slight tremor ran through his frame after he 
had held the hand for a few seconds. 

“Tell me quite frankly, Mr. Pender,” he said 
soothingly, releasing the hand, and with deep 
attention in his manner, “ tell me all the steps that 


A PSYCHICAL INVASION 


15 


led to the beginning of this invasion. I mean tell 
me what the particular drug was, and why you took 
it, and how it affected you ” 

“ Then you know it began with a drug ! ” cried the 
author, with undisguised astonishment. 

“ I only know from what I observe in you, and in 
its effect upon myself. You are in a surprising 
psychical condition. Certain portions of your 
atmosphere are vibrating at a far greater rate than 
others. This is the effect of a drug, but of no 
ordinary drug. Allow me to finish, please. If the 
higher rate of vibration spreads all over, you will 
become, of course, permanently cognisant of a much 
larger world than the one you know normally. If, 
on the other hand, the rapid portion sinks back to 
the usual rate, you will lose these occasional increased 
perceptions you now have.” 

“ You amaze me ! ” exclaimed the author ; “ for 
your words exactly describe what I have been 
feeling ” 

“ I mention this only in passing, and to give you 
confidence before you approach the account of your 
real affliction,” continued the doctor. “ All per- 
ception, as you know, is the result of vibrations ; 
and clairvoyance simply means becoming sensitive 
to an increased scale of vibrations. The awakening 
of the inner senses we hear so much about means no 
more than that. Your partial clairvoyance is easily 
explained. The only thing that puzzles me is how 
you managed to procure the drug, for it is not easy 
to get in pure form, and no adulterated tincture 
could have given you the terrific impetus I see you 
have acquired. But, please proceed now and tell me 
your story in your own way.” 


1 6 


JOHN SILENCE 


“ This Cannabis indica” the author went on, “ came 
into my possession last autumn while my wife was 
away. I need not explain how I got it, for that has 
no importance ; but it was the genuine fluid extract, 
and I could not resist the temptation to make an 
experiment. One of its effects, as you know, is to 
induce torrential laughter ” 

“Yes; sometimes.” 

“ 1 am a writer of humorous tales, and I wished 

to increase my own sense of laughter — to see the 
ludicrous from an abnormal point of view. I wished 
to study it a bit, if possible, and ” 

“ Tell me ! ” 

“ I took an experimental dose. I starved for six 
hours to hasten the effect, locked myself into this 
room, and gave orders not to be disturbed. Then I 
swallowed the stuff and waited.” 

“ And the effect ? ” 

“ I waited one hour, two, three, four, five hours. 
Nothing happened. No laughter came, but only a 
great weariness instead. Nothing in the room or in 
my thoughts came within a hundred miles of a 
humorous aspect.” 

“Always a most uncertain drug,” interrupted the 
doctor. “ We make very small use of it on that 
account.” 

“ At two o’clock in the morning I felt so hungry 
and tired that I decided to give up the experiment 
and wait no longer. I drank some milk and went 
upstairs to bed. I felt flat and disappointed. I fell 
asleep at once and must have slept for about an hour, 
when I awoke suddenly with a great noise in my ears. 
It was the noise of my own laughter ! I was simply 
shaking with merriment. At first I was bewildered 


A PSYCHICAL INVASION 


1 7 


and thought I had been laughing in dreams, but a 
moment later I remembered the drug, and was 
delighted to think that after all I had got an effect. 
It had been working all along, only I had mis- 
calculated the time. The only unpleasant thing 
then was an odd feeling that I had not waked 
naturally, but had been wakened by some one else — 
deliberately. This came to me as a certainty in the 
middle of my noisy laughter and distressed me.” 

“ Any impression who it could have been ? ” asked 
the doctor, now listening with close attention to 
every word, very much on the alert. 

Pender hesitated and tried to smile. He brushed 
his hair from his forehead with a nervous gesture. 

“You must tell me all your impressions, even your 
fancies ; they are quite as important as your 
certainties.” 

“ I had a vague idea that it was some one con- 
nected with my forgotten dream, some one who had 
been at me in my sleep, some one of great strength 
and great ability — of great force — quite an unusual 
personality — and, I was certain, too — a woman.” 

“A good woman?” asked John Silence quietly. 

Pender started a little at the question and his 
sallow face flushed ; it seemed to surprise him. But 
he shook his head quickly with an indefinable look 
of horror. 

“ Evil,” he answered briefly, “ appallingly evil, and 
yet mingled with the sheer wickedness of it was 
also a certain perverseness — the perversity of the 
unbalanced mind.” 

He hesitated a moment and looked up sharply at 
his interlocutor. A shade of suspicion showed itself 
in his eyes. 

2 


1 8 


JOHN SILENCE 


“No,” laughed the doctor, “you need not fear that 
I’m merely humouring you, or think you mad. Far 
from it. Your story interests me exceedingly and 
you furnish me unconsciously with a number of 
clues as you tell it. You see, I possess some know- 
ledge of my own as to these psychic byways.” 

“ I was shaking with such violent laughter,” 
continued the narrator, reassured in a moment, 
“ though with no clear idea what was amusing me, 
that I had the greatest difficulty in getting up for the 
matches, and was afraid I should frighten the servants 
overhead with my explosions. When the gas was lit 
I found the room empty, of course, and the door 
locked as usual. Then I half dressed and went out 
on to the landing, my hilarity better under control, 
and proceeded to go downstairs. I wished to record 
my sensations. I stuffed a handkerchief into my 
mouth so as not to scream aloud and communicate 
my hysterics to the entire household.” 

“ And the presence of this — this ? ” 

“ It was hanging about me all the time,” said 
Pender, “ but for the moment it seemed to have with- 
drawn. Probably, too, my laughter killed all other 
emotions.” 

“ And how long did you take getting downstairs ? ” 
“I was just coming to that. I see you know all 
my ‘ symptoms * in advance, as it were ; for, of course, 
I thought I should never get to the bottom. Each 
step seemed to take five minutes, and crossing the 
narrow hall at the foot of the stairs — well, I could 
have sworn it was half an hour’s journey had not my 
watch certified that it was a few seconds. Yet I 
walked fast and tried to push on. It was no good. 
I walked apparently without advancing, and at that 


A PSYCHICAL INVASION 


19 

rate it would have taken me a week to get down 
Putney Hill” 

“An experimental dose radically alters the scale 
of time and space sometimes ” 

“ But, when at last I got into my study and lit the 
gas, the change came horridly, and sudden as a flash 
of lightning. It was like a douche of icy water, and 
in the middle of this storm of laughter ” 

“Yes; what?” asked the doctor, leaning forward 
and peering into his eyes. 

“ 1 was overwhelmed with terror,” said Pender, 

lowering his reedy voice at the mere recollection of 
it. 

He paused a moment and mopped his forehead. 
The scared, hunted look in his eyes now dominated 
the whole face. Yet, all the time, the corners of his 
mouth hinted of possible laughter as though the 
recollection of that merriment still amused him. The 
combination of fear and laughter in his face was very 
curious, and lent great conviction to his story ; it also 
lent a bizarre expression of horror to his gestures. 

“ Terror, was it ? ” repeated the doctor soothingly. 

“Yes, terror; for, though the Thing that woke me 
seemed to have gone, the memory of it still frightened 
me, and I collapsed into a chair. Then I locked the 
door and tried to reason with myself, but the drug 
made my movements so prolonged that it took me 
five minutes to reach the door, and another five to 
get back to the chair again. The laughter, too, kept 
bubbling up inside me — great wholesome laughter 
that shook me like gusts of wind — so that even my 
terror almost made me laugh. Oh, but I may tell 
you, Dr. Silence, it was altogether vile, that mixture 
of fear and laughter, altogether vile ! 


20 


JOHN SILENCE 


“Then, all at once, the things in the room again 
presented their funny side to me and set me of! 
laughing more furiously than ever. The bookcase 
was ludicrous, the arm-chair a perfect clown, the 
way the clock looked at me on the mantelpiece too 
comic for words ; the arrangement of papers and 
inkstand on the desk tickled me till I roared and 
shook and held my sides and the tears streamed 
down my cheeks. And that footstool ! Oh, that 
absurd footstool ! ” 

He lay back in his chair, laughing to himself and 
holding up his hands at the thought of it, and at 
the sight of him Dr. Silence laughed too. 

“ Go on, please,” he said, “ I quite understand. I 
know something myself of the hashish laughter.” 

The author pulled himself together and resumed, 
his face growing quickly grave again. 

“ So, you see, side by side with this extravagant, 
apparently causeless merriment, there was also an 
extravagant, apparently causeless terror. The drug 
produced the laughter, I knew ; but what brought in 
the terror I could not imagine. Everywhere behind 
the fun lay the fear. It was terror masked by cap 
and bells; and I became the playground for two 
opposing emotions, armed and fighting to the death. 
Gradually, then, the impression grew in me that this 
fear was caused by the invasion — so you called it just 
now — of the ‘ person 1 who had wakened me : she was 
utterly evil; inimical to my soul, or at least to all 
in me that wished for good. There I stood, sweating 
and trembling, laughingat everything in the room, yet 
all the while with this white terror mastering my heart. 
And this creature was putting — putting her ” 

He hesitated again, using his handkerchief freely. 


A PSYCHICAL INVASION 21 

“Putting what?” 

“ putting ideas into my mind,” he went on 

glancing nervously about the room. “ Actually tap- 
ping my thought-stream so as to switch off the 
usual current and inject her own. How mad that 
sounds! I know it, but it’s true. It’s the only way 
I can express it. Moreover, while the operation 
terrified me, the skill with which it was accomplished 
filled me afresh with laughter at the clumsiness of 
men by comparison. Our ignorant, bungling methods 
of teaching the minds of others, of inculcating ideas, 
and so on, overwhelmed me with laughter when I 
understood this superior and diabolical method. Yet 
my laughter seemed hollow and ghastly, and ideas of 
evil and tragedy trod close upon the heels of the comic. 
Oh, doctor, I tell you again, it was unnerving ! ” 

John Silence sat with his head thrust forward to 
catch every word of the story which the other 
continued to pour out in nervous, jerky sentences 
and lowered voice. 

“You saw nothing — no one — all this time?” he 
asked. 

“ Not with my eyes. There was no visual hallu- 
cination. But in my mind there began to grow the 
vivid picture of a woman — large, dark-skinned, with 
white teeth and masculine features, and one eye — the 
left — so drooping as to appear almost closed. Oh, 
such a face ! ” 

“ A face you would recognise again ? ” 

Pender laughed dreadfully. 

“ I wish I could forget it,” he whispered, “ I only 
wish I could forget it ! ” Then he sat forward in his 
chair suddenly, and grasped the doctor’s hand with 
an emotional gesture. 


22 


JOHN SILENCE 


“ I must tell you how grateful I am for your 
patience and sympathy,” he cried, with a tremor in 
his voice, “ and — that you do not think me mad. I 
have told no one else a quarter of all this, and the 
mere freedom of speech — the relief of sharing my 
affliction with another — has helped me already more 
than I can possibly say.” 

Dr. Silence pressed his hand and looked steadily 
into the frightened eyes. His voice was very gentle 
when he replied. 

“Your case, you know, is very singular, but of 
absorbing interest to me,” he said, “ for it threatens, 
not your physical existence, but the temple of your 
psychical existence — the inner life. Your mind 
would not be permanently affected here and now, in 
this world ; but in the existence after the body is 
left behind, you might wake up with your spirit so 
twisted, so distorted, so befouled, that you would be 
spiritually insane — a far more radical condition than 
merely being insane here.” 

There came a strange hush over the room, and be- 
tween the two men sitting there facing one another. 

“ Do you really mean — Good Lord ! ” stammered 
the author as soon as he could find his tongue. 

“ What I mean in detail will keep till a little later, 
and I need only say now that I should not have 
spoken in this way unless I were quite positive of 
being able to help you. Oh, there’s no doubt as to 
that, believe me. In the first place, I am very 
familiar with the workings of this extraordinary 
drug, this drug which has had the chance effect of 
opening you up to the forces of another region ; and, 
in the second, I have a firm belief in the reality of 
super-sensuous occurrences as well as considerable 


A PSYCHICAL INVASION 


23 


knowledge of psychic processes acquired by long and 
painful experiment. The rest is, or should be, merely 
sympathetic treatment and practical application. 
The hashish has partially opened another world to 
you by increasing your rate of psychical vibration, 
and thus rendering you abnormally sensitive. Ancient 
forces attached to this house have attacked you. 
For the moment I am only puzzled as to their 
precise nature; for were they of an ordinary char- 
acter, I should myself be psychic enough to feel 
them. Yet I am conscious of feeling nothing as yet. 
But now, please continue, Mr. Pender, and tell me 
the rest of your wonderful story ; and when you have 
finished, I will talk about the means of cure.” 

Pender shifted his chair a little closer to the friendly 
doctor and then went on in the same nervous voice 
with his narrative. 

“After making some notes of my impressions I 
finally got upstairs again to bed. It was four o’clock 
in the morning. I laughed all the way up — at the 
grotesque banisters, the droll physiognomy of the 
staircase window, the burlesque grouping of the 
furniture, and the memory of that outrageous foot- 
stool in the room below ; but nothing more happened 
to alarm or disturb me, and I woke late in the morn- 
ing after a dreamless sleep, none the worse for my 
experiment except for a slight headache and a cold- 
ness of the extremities due to lowered circulation.” 

“ Fear gone, too ? ” asked the doctor. 

“ I seemed to have forgotten it, or at least ascribed 
it to mere nervousness. It’s reality had gone, any- 
how for the time, and all that day I wrote and wrote 
and wrote. My sense of laughter seemed wonder- 
fully quickened and my characters acted without 


24 


JOHN SILENCE 


effort out of the heart of true humour. I was ex- 
ceedingly pleased with this result of my experiment. 
But when the stenographer had taken her departure 
and I came to read over the pages she had typed out, 
I recalled her sudden glances of surprise and the odd 
way she had looked up at me while I was dictating. 
I was amazed at what I read and could hardly 
believe I had uttered it.” 

“ And why?” 

“ It was so distorted. The words, indeed, were 
mine so far as I could remember, but the meanings 
seemed strange. It frightened me. The sense was 
so altered. At the very places where my characters 
were intended to tickle the ribs, only curious 
emotions of sinister amusement resulted. Dreadful 
innuendoes had managed to creep into the phrases. 
There was laughter of a kind, but it was bizarre, 
horrible, distressing ; and my attempt at analysis 
only increased my dismay. The story, as it read 
then, made me shudder, for by virtue of these slight 
changes it had come somehow to hold the soul of 
horror, of horror disguised as merriment. The 
framework of humour was there, if you understand 
me, but the characters had turned sinister, and their 
laughter was evil.” 

“ Can you show me this writing ? ” 

The author shook his head. 

“ I destroyed it,” he whispered. “ But, in the end, 
though of course much perturbed about it, I per- 
suaded myself that it was due to some after-effect of 
the drug, a sort of reaction that gave a twist to my 
mind and made me read macabre interpretations 
into words and situations that did not properly hold 
them.” 


A PSYCHICAL INVASION 


25 

“ And, meanwhile, did the presence of this person 
leave you ? ” 

“No; that stayed more or less. When my mind 
was actively employed I forgot it, but when idle, 
dreaming, or doing nothing in particular, there she 
was beside me, influencing my mind horribly ” 

“In what way, precisely?” interrupted the doctor. 

“ Evil, scheming thoughts came to me, visions of 
crime, hateful pictures of wickedness, and the kind 
of bad imagination that so far has been foreign, 
indeed impossible, to my normal nature ” 

“ The pressure of the Dark Powers upon the per- 
sonality,” murmured the doctor, making a quick note. 

“ Eh ? I didn’t quite catch ” 

“ Pray, go on. I am merely making notes ; you 
shall know their purport fully later.” 

“ Even when my wife returned I was still aware of 
this Presence in the house ; it associated itself with 
my inner personality in most intimate fashion ; and 
outwardly I always felt oddly constrained to be 
polite and respectful towards it — to open doors, 
provide chairs and hold myself carefully deferential 
when it was about. It became very compelling at 
last, and, if I failed in any little particular, I seemed 
to know that it pursued me about the house, from 
one room to another, haunting my very soul in its 
inmost abode. It certainly came before my wife so 
far as my attentions were concerned. 

“ But, let me first finish the story of my experi- 
mental dose, for I took it again the third night, and 
underwent a very similar experience, delayed like the 
first in coming, and then carrying me off my feet 
when it did come with a rush of this false demon- 
laughter. This time, however, there was a reversal 


2 6 


JOHN SILENCE 


of the changed scale of space and time ; it shortened 
instead of lengthened, so that I dressed and got 
downstairs in about twenty seconds, and the couple 
of hours I stayed and worked in the study passed 
literally like a period of ten minutes.” 

“ That is often true of an overdose,” interjected 
the doctor, “ and you may go a mile in a few minutes, 
or a few yards in a quarter of an hour. It is quite 
incomprehensible to those who have never experi- 
enced it, and is a curious proof that time and space 
are merely forms of thought.” 

“This time,” Pender went on, talking more and 
more rapidly in his excitement, “ another extra- 
ordinary effect came to me, and I experienced a 
curious changing of the senses, so that I perceived 
external things through one large main sense-channel 
instead of through the five divisions known as sight, 
smell, touch, and so forth. You will, I know, 
understand me when I tell you that I heard sights 
and saw sounds. No language can make this 
comprehensible, of course, and I can only say, for 
instance, that the striking of the clock I saw as a 
visible picture in the air before me. I saw the 
sounds of the tinkling bell. And in precisely the 
same way I heard the colours in the room, especially 
the colours of those books in the shelf behind 
you. Those red bindings I heard in deep sounds, 
and the yellow covers of the French bindings next 
to them made a shrill, piercing note not unlike 
the chattering of starlings. That brown bookcase 
muttered, and those green curtains opposite kept up 
a constant sort of rippling sound like the lower notes 
of a wood-horn. But I only was conscious of these 
sounds when I looked steadily at the different 


A PSYCHICAL INVASION 


2 7 


objects, and thought about them. The room, you 
understand, was not full of a chorus of notes ; but 
when I concentrated my mind upon a colour, I heard, 
as well as saw, it.” 

“ That is a known, though rarely-obtained, effect ot 
Cannabis indica ,” observed the doctor. “ And it 
provoked laughter again, did it ? ” 

“ Only the muttering of the cupboard-bookcase 
made me laugh. It was so like a great animal trying 
to get itself noticed, and made me think of a per- 
forming bear — which is full of a kind of pathetic 
humour, you know. But this mingling of the senses 
produced no confusion in my brain. On the contrary, 
I was unusually clear-headed and experienced an 
intensification of consciousness, and felt marvellously 
alive and keen-minded. 

“ Moreover, when I took up a pencil in obedience 
to an impulse to sketch — a talent not normally mine 
— I found that I could draw nothing but heads, 
nothing, in fact, but one head — always the same — the 
head of a dark-skinned woman, with huge and 
terrible features and a very drooping left eye ; and so 
well drawn, too, that I was amazed, as you may 
imagine ” 

“ And the expression of the face ? ” 

Pender hesitated a moment for words, casting 
about with his hands in the air and hunching his 
shoulders. A perceptible shudder ran over him. 

“ What I can only describe as — blackness ,” he 
replied in a low tone ; “ the face of a dark and evil 
soul.” 

“ You destroyed that, too ? ” queried the doctor 
sharply. 

“ No ; I have kept the drawings,” he said, with a 


28 


JOHN SILENCE 


laugh, and rose to get them from a drawer in the 
writing-desk behind him. 

“ Here is all that remains of the pictures, you see,” 
he added, pushing a number of loose sheets under 
the doctor’s eyes ; “ nothing but a few scrawly lines. 
That’s all I found the next morning. I had really 
drawn no heads at all — nothing but those lines and 
blots and wriggles. The pictures were entirely 
subjective, and existed only in my mind which con- 
structed them out of a few wild strokes of the pen. 
Like the altered scale of space and time it was a 
complete delusion. These all passed, of course, with 
the passing of the drug’s effects. But the other 
thing did not pass. I mean, the presence of that 
Dark Soul remained with me. It is here still. It is 
real. I don’t know how I can escape from it.” 

“ It is attached to the house, not to you personally. 
You must leave the house.” 

“Yes. Only I cannot afford to leave the house, 
for my work is my sole means of support, and — well, 
you see, since this change I cannot even write. They 
are horrible, these mirthless tales I now write, with 
their mockery of laughter, their diabolical suggestion. 
Horrible ! I shall go mad if this continues.” 

He screwed his face up and looked about the 
room as though he expected to see some haunting 
shape. 

“ The influence in this house, induced by my ex- 
periment, has killed in a flash, in a sudden stroke, 
the sources of my humour, and, though I still go on 
writing funny tales — I have a certain name, you know 
— my inspiration has dried up, and much of what I 
write I have to burn — yes, doctor, to burn, before 
any one sees it.” 


A PSYCHICAL INVASION 


29 

“ As utterly alien to your own mind and person- 
ality ? ” 

“Utterly! As though some one else had written 

it ” 

“Ah!” 

“And shocking!” He passed his hand over his 
eyes a moment and let the breath escape softly 
through his teeth. “Yet most damnably clever in 
the consummate way the vile suggestions are insinu- 
ated under cover of a kind of high drollery. My 
stenographer left me, of course — and I’ve been afraid 
to take another ” 

John Silence got up and began to walk about the 
room leisurely without speaking ; he appeared to be 
examining the pictures on the wall and reading the 
names of the books lying about. Presently he paused 
on the hearthrug, with his back to the fire, and turned 
to look his patient quietly in the eyes. Pender’s 
face was grey and drawn ; the hunted expression 
dominated it; the long recital had told upon him. 

“ Thank you, Mr. Pender,” he said, a curious glow 
showing about his fine, quiet face, “thank you for 
the sincerity and frankness of your account. But I 
think now there is nothing further I need ask you.” 
He indulged in a long scrutiny of the author’s 
haggard features, drawing purposely the man’s eyes 
to his own and then meeting them with a look of 
power and confidence calculated to inspire even the 
feeblest soul with courage. “ And, to begin with,” 
he added, smiling pleasantly, “let me assure you 
without delay that you need have no alarm, for you 
are no more insane or deluded than I myself am ” 

Pender heaved a deep sigh and tried to return the 
smile. 


30 


JOHN SILENCE 


“ and this is simply a case, so far as I can 

judge at present, of a very singular psychical invasion, 
and a very sinister one, too, if you perhaps understand 
what I mean ” 

“ It’s an odd expression ; you used it before, you 
know,” said the author wearily, yet eagerly listening 
to every word of the diagnosis, and deeply touched 
by the intelligent sympathy which did not at once 
indicate the lunatic asylum. 

“ Possibly,” returned the other, “ and an odd afflic- 
tion too, you’ll allow, yet one not unknown to the 
nations of antiquity, nor to those moderns, perhaps, who 
recognise the freedom of action under certain patho- 
genic conditions between this world and another.” 

“And you think,” asked Pender hastily, “that it 
is all primarily due to the Cannabis ? There is nothing 
radically amiss with myself — nothing incurable, 
or ?” 

“ Due entirely to the overdose,” Dr. Silence replied 
emphatically, “ to the drug’s direct action upon your 
psychical being. It rendered you ultra-sensitive and 
made you respond to an increased rate of vibration. 
And, let me tell you, Mr. Pender, that your experi- 
ment might have had results far more dire. It has 
brought you into touch with a somewhat singular 
class of Invisible, but of one, I think, chiefly human 
in character. You might, however, just as easily 
have been drawn out of human range altogether, and 
the results of such a contingency would have been ex- 
ceedingly terrible. Indeed, you would not now be here 
to tell the tale. I need not alarm you on that score, 
but mention it as a warning you will not misunder- 
stand or underrate after what you have been through. 

“You look puzzled. You do not quite gather 


A PSYCHICAL INVASION 


31 


what I am driving at ; and it is not to be expected 
that you should, for you, I suppose, are the nominal 
Christian with the nominal Christian’s lofty standard 
of ethics, and his utter ignorance of spiritual possi- 
bilities. Beyond a somewhat childish understanding 
of ‘spiritual wickedness in high places,’ you probably 
have no conception of what is possible once you 
break down the slender gulf that is mercifully fixed 
between you and that Outer World. But my studies 
and training have taken me far outside these orthodox 
trips, and I have made experiments that I could 
scarcely speak to you about in language that would 
be intelligible to you.” 

He paused a moment to note the breathless interest 
of Pender’s face and manner. Every word he uttered 
was calculated ; he knew exactly the value and effect 
of the emotions he desired to waken in the heart of 
the afflicted being before him. 

“And from certain knowledge I have gained 
through various experiences,” he continued calmly, 
“ I can diagnose your case as I said before to be one 
of psychical invasion.” 

“ And the nature of this — er — invasion ? ” stam- 
mered the bewildered writer of humorous tales. 

“ There is no reason why I should not say at once 
that I do not yet quite know,” replied Dr. Silence. 
“ I may first have to make one or two experi- 
ments ” 

“ On me ? ” gasped Pender, catching his breath. 

“Not exactly,” the doctor said, with a grave 
smile, “but with your assistance, perhaps. I shall 
want to test the conditions of the house — to ascertain, 
if possible, the character of the forces, of this strange 
personality that has been haunting you ” 


32 


JOHN SILENCE 


“ At present you have no idea exactly who — what 

— why ” asked the other in a wild flurry of 

interest, dread and amazement. 

“ I have a very good idea, but no proof rather,” 
returned the doctor. “The effects of the drug in 
altering the scale of time and space, and merging 
the senses have nothing primarily to do with the 
invasion. They come to any one who is fool enough 
to take an experimental dose. It is the other features 
of your case that are unusual. You see, you are now 
in touch with certain violent emotions, desires, 
purposes, still active in this house, that were produced 
in the past by some powerful and evil personality 
that lived here. How long ago, or why they still 
persist so forcibly, I cannot positively say. But I 
should judge that they are merely forces acting 
automatically with the momentum of their terrific 
original impetus.” 

“ Not directed by a living being, a conscious will, 
you mean ? ” 

“ Possibly not — but none the less dangerous on 
that account, and more difficult to deal with. I 
cannot explain to you in a few minutes the nature 
of such things, for you have not made the studies 
that would enable you to follow me ; but I have 
reason to believe that on the dissolution at death 
of a human being, its forces may still persist and 
continue to act in a blind, unconscious fashion. As 
a rule they speedily dissipate themselves, but in the 
case of a very powerful personality they may last a 
long time. And, in some cases — of which I incline 
to think this is one — these forces may coalesce with 
certain non-human entities who thus continue their 
life indefinitely and increase their strength to an 


A PSYCHICAL INVASION 


33 

unbelievable degree. If the original personality was 
evil, the beings attracted to the left-over forces will 
also be evil. In this case, I think there has been an 
unusual and dreadful aggrandisement of the thoughts 
and purposes left behind long ago by a woman of 
consummate wickedness and great personal power of 
character and intellect. Now, do you begin to see 
what I am driving at a little ? ” 

Pender stared fixedly at his companion, plain 
horror showing in his eyes. But he found nothing 
to say, and the doctor continued — 

“In your case, predisposed by the action of the 
drug, you have experienced the rush of these forces 
in undiluted strength. They wholly obliterate in 
you the sense of humour, fancy, imagination, — all 
that makes for cheerfulness and hope. They seek, 
though perhaps automatically only, to oust your own 
thoughts and establish themselves in their place. 
You are the victim of a psychical invasion. At the 
same time, you have become clairvoyant in the true 
sense. You are also a clairvoyant victim.” 

Pender mopped his face and sighed. He left his 
chair and went over to the fireplace to warm himself. 

“You must think me a quack to talk like this, or 
a madman,” laughed Dr. Silence. “ But never mind 
that. I have come to help you, and I can help you 
if you will do what I tell you. It is very simple: 
you must leave this house at once. Oh, never mind 
the difficulties ; we will deal with those together. I 
can place another house at your disposal, or I would 
take the lease here off your hands, and later have it 
pulled down. Your case interests me greatly, and 
I mean to see you through, so that you have no 
anxiety, and can drop back into your old groove of 
3 


34 


JOHN SILENCE 


work to-morrow ! The drug has provided you, and 
therefore me, with a short-cut to a very interesting 
experience. I am grateful to you.” 

The author poked the fire vigorously, emotion 
rising in him like a tide. He glanced towards the 
door nervously. 

“There is no need to alarm your wife or to tell 
her the details of our conversation,” pursued the 
other quietly. “ Let her know that you will soon be 
in possession again of your sense of humour and 
your health, and explain that I am lending you 
another house for six months. Meanwhile I may 
have the right to use this house for a night or two 
for my experiment. Is that understood between us ? ” 

“ I can only thank you from the bottom of my 
heart,” stammered Pender, unable to find words to 
express his gratitude. 

Then he hesitated for a moment, searching the 
doctor’s face anxiously. 

“ And your experiment with the house ? ” he said 
at length. 

“ Of the simplest character, my dear Mr. Pender. 
Although I am myself an artificially trained psychic, 
and consequently aware of the presence of discarnate 
entities as a rule, I have so far felt nothing here at 
all. This makes me sure that the forces acting here 
are of an unusual description. What I propose to do 
is to make an experiment with a view of drawing out 
this evil, coaxing it from its lair, so to speak, in order 
that it may exhaust itself through me and become 
dissipated for ever. I have already been inoculated,” 
he added ; “ I consider myself to be immune.” 

“ Heavens above ! ” gasped the author, collapsing 
on to a chair. 


A PSYCHICAL INVASION 


35 


“ Hell beneath ! might be a more appropriate 
exclamation,” the doctor laughed. “But, seriously, 
Mr. Pender, this is what I propose to do — with your 
permission.” 

“ Of course, of course,” cried the other, “ you have 
my permission and my best wishes for success. I 
can see no possible objection, but ” 

“ But what?” 

“ I pray to Heaven you will not undertake this 
experiment alone, will you ? ” 

“ Oh dear, no ; not alone.” 

“You will take a companion with good nerves, 
and reliable in case of disaster, won’t you ? ” 

“ I shall bring two companions,” the doctor said. 

“ Ah, that’s better. I feel easier. I am sure you 
must have among your acquaintances men who ” 

“ I shall not think of bringing men, Mr. Pender.” 

The other looked up sharply. 

“ No, or women either ; or children.” 

1 1 don’t understand. Who will you bring, then ? ” 

“ Animals,” explained the doctor, unable to prevent 
a smile at his companion’s expression of surprise — 
“ two animals, a cat and a dog.” 

Pender stared as if his eyes would drop out upon 
the floor, and then led the way without another word 
into the adjoining room where his wife was awaiting 
them for tea. 

II 

A few days later the humorist and his wife, with 
minds greatly relieved, moved into a small furnished 
house placed at their free disposal in another part of 
London ; and John Silence, intent upon his approach- 
ing experiment, made ready to spend a night in the 


36 


JOHN SILENCE 


empty house on the top of Putney Hill. Only two 
rooms were prepared for occupation : the study on 
the ground floor and the bedroom immediately above 
it ; all other doors were to be locked, and no servant 
was to be left in the house. The motor had orders 
to call for him at nine o’clock the following morning. 

And, meanwhile, his secretary had instructions to 
look up the past history and associations of the place, 
and learn everything he could concerning the char- 
acter of former occupants, recent or remote. 

The animals, by whose sensitiveness he intended 
to test any unusual conditions in the atmosphere of 
the building, Dr. Silence selected with care and 
judgment. He believed (and had already made 
curious experiments to prove it) that animals were 
more often, and more truly, clairvoyant than human 
beings. Many of them, he felt convinced, possessed 
powers of perception far superior to that mere keen- 
ness of the senses common to all dwellers in the 
wilds where the senses grow specially alert ; they had 
what he termed “ animal clairvoyance,” and from his 
experiments with horses, dogs, cats, and even birds, 
he had drawn certain deductions, which, however, 
need not be referred to in detail here. 

Cats, in particular, he believed, were almost con- 
tinuously conscious of a larger field of vision, too 
detailed even for a photographic camera, and quite 
beyond the reach of normal human organs. He had, 
further, observed that while dogs were usually terri- 
fied in the presence of such phenomena, cats on the 
other hand were soothed and satisfied. They 
welcomed manifestations as something belonging 
peculiarly to their own region. 

He selected his animals, therefore, with wisdom 


A PSYCHICAL INVASION 


37 


so that they might afford a differing test, each in its 
own way, and that one should not merely communi- 
cate its own excitement to the other. He took a 
dog and a cat. 

The cat he chose, now full grown, had lived with 
him since kittenhood, a kittenhood of perplexing 
sweetness and audacious mischief. Wayward it 
was and fanciful, ever playing its own mysterious 
games in the corners of the room, jumping at in- 
visible nothings, leaping sideways into the air and 
falling with tiny mocassined feet on to another part 
of the carpet, yet with an air of dignified earnestness 
which showed that the performance was necessary to 
its own well-being, and not done merely to impress a 
stupid human audience. In the middle of elaborate 
washing it would look up, startled, as though to stare 
at the approach of some Invisible, cocking its little 
head sideways and putting out a velvet pad to inspect 
cautiously. Then it would get absent-minded, and 
stare with equal intentness in another direction (just 
to confuse the onlookers), and suddenly go on 
furiously washing its body again, but in quite a new 
place. Except for a white patch on its breast it was 
coal black. And its name was — Smoke. 

“ Smoke ” described its temperament as well as its 
appearance. Its movements, its individuality, its 
posing as a little furry mass of concealed mysteries, 
its elfin-like elusiveness, all combined to justify its 
name ; and a subtle painter might have pictured it as 
a wisp of floating smoke, the fire below betraying 
itself at two points only — the glowing eyes. 

All its forces ran to intelligence — secret intelligence, 
the wordless, incalculable intuition of the Cat. It 
was, indeed, the cat for the business in hand. 


38 


JOHN SILENCE 


The selection of the dog was not so simple, for the 
doctor owned many ; but after much deliberation he 
chose a collie, called Flame from his yellow coat. 
True, it was a trifle old, and stiff in the joints, and 
even beginning to grow deaf, but, on the other hand, 
it was a very particular friend of Smoke’s, and had 
fathered it from kittenhood upwards so that a subtle 
understanding existed between them. It was this 
that turned the balance in its favour, this and its 
courage. Moreover, though good-tempered, it was a 
terrible fighter, and its anger when provoked by a 
righteous cause was a fury of fire, and irresistible. 

It had come to him quite young, straight from the 
shepherd, with the air of the hills yet in its nostrils, 
and was then little more than skin and bones and 
teeth. For a collie it was sturdily built, its nose 
blunter than most, its yellow hair stiff rather than 
silky, and it had full eyes, unlike the slit eyes of its 
breed. Only its master could touch it, for it ignored 
strangers, and despised their pattings — when any dared 
to pat it. There was something patriarchal about 
the old beast. He was in earnest, and went through 
life with tremendous energy and big things in view, 
as though he had the reputation of his whole race to 
uphold. And to watch him fighting against odds 
was to understand why he was terrible. 

In his relations with Smoke he was always absurdly 
gentle ; also he was fatherly ; and at the same time 
betrayed a certain diffidence or shyness. He recog- 
nised that Smoke called for strong yet respectful 
management. The cat’s circuitous methods puzzled 
him, and his elaborate pretences perhaps shocked 
the dog’s liking for direct, undisguised action. Yet, 
while he failed to comprehend these tortuous feline 


A PSYCHICAL INVASION 


39 


mysteries, he was never contemptuous or condescend- 
ing; and he presided over the safety of his furry 
black friend somewhat as a father, loving but 
intuitive, might superintend the vagaries of a 
wayward and talented child. And, in return, Smoke 
rewarded him with exhibitions of fascinating and 
audacious mischief. 

And these brief descriptions of their characters 
are necessary for the proper understanding of what 
subsequently took place. 

With Smoke sleeping in the folds of his fur coat, 
and the collie lying watchful on the seat opposite, 
John Silence went down in his motor after dinner on 
the night of November 15th. 

And the fog was so dense that they were obliged 
to travel at quarter speed the entire way. 

It was after ten o’clock when he dismissed the 
motor and entered the dingy little house with the 
latchkey provided by Pender. He found the hall 
gas turned low, and a fire in the study. Books and 
food had also been placed ready by the servant 
according to instructions. Coils of fog rushed in 
after him through the opened door and filled the hall 
and passage with its cold discomfort. 

The first thing Dr. Silence did was to lock up 
Smoke in the study with a saucer of milk before the 
fire, and then make a search of the house with Flame. 
The dog ran cheerfully behind him all the way while 
he tried the doors of the other rooms to make sure 
they were locked. He nosed about into corners and 
made little excursions on his own account. His 
manner was expectant. He knew there must be 
something unusual about the proceeding, because it 


40 


JOHN SILENCE 


was contrary to the habits of his whole life not to be 
asleep at this hour on the mat in front of the fire. 
He kept looking up into his master’s face, as door after 
door was tried, with an expression of intelligent 
sympathy, but at the same time a certain air of 
disapproval. Yet everything his master did was good 
in his eyes, and he betrayed as little impatience as 
possible with all this unnecessary journeying to and 
fro. If the doctor was pleased to play this sort of 
game at such an hour of the night, it was surely not 
for him to object. So he played it too ; and was 
very busy and earnest about it into the bargain. 

After an uneventful search they came down again 
to the study, and here Dr. Silence discovered Smoke 
washing his face calmly in front of the fire. The 
saucer of milk was licked dry and clean ; the pre- 
liminary examination that cats always make in 
new surroundings had evidently been satisfactorily 
concluded. He drew an arm-chair up to the fire, 
stirred the coals into a blaze, arranged the table and 
lamp to his satisfaction for reading, and then prepared 
surreptitiously to watch the animals. He wished to 
observe them carefully without their being aware of it. 

Now, in spite of their respective ages, it was the 
regular custom of these two to play together every 
night before sleep. Smoke always made the advances, 
beginning with grave impudence to pat the dog’s 
tail, and Flame played cumbrously,with condescension. 
It was his duty, rather than pleasure; he was glad 
when it was over, and sometimes he was very 
determined and refused to play at all. 

And this night was one of the occasions on which 
he was firm. 

The doctor, looking cautiously over the top of his 


A PSYCHICAL INVASION 


4i 


book, watched the cat begin the performance. It 
started by gazing with an innocent expression at the 
dog where he lay with nose on paws and eyes wide 
open in the middle of the floor. Then it got up and 
made as though it meant to walk to the door, going 
deliberately and very softly. Flame’s eyes followed 
it until it was beyond the range of sight, and then 
the cat turned sharply and began patting his tail 
tentatively with one paw. The tail moved slightly 
in reply, and Smoke changed paws and tapped it 
again. The dog, however, did not rise to play as was 
his wont, and the cat fell to patting it briskly with 
both paws. Flame still lay motionless. 

This puzzled and bored the cat, and it went round 
and stared hard into its friend’s face to see what 
was the matter. Perhaps some inarticulate message 
flashed from the dog’s eyes into its own little brain, 
making it understand that the programme for the 
night had better not begin with play. Perhaps it 
only realised that its friend was immovable. But, 
whatever the reason, its usual persistence thence- 
forward deserted it, and it made no further attempts 
at persuasion. Smoke yielded at once to the dog’s 
mood ; it sat down where it was and began to wash. 

But the washing, the doctor noted, was by no 
means its real purpose; it only used it to mask 
something else ; it stopped at the most busy and 
furious moments and began to stare about the room. 
Its thoughts wandered absurdly. It peered intently 
at the curtains; at the shadowy corners; at empty 
space above ; leaving its body in curiously awkward 
positions for whole minutes together. Then it turned 
sharply and stared with a sudden signal of intelligence 
at the dog, and Flame at once rose somewhat stiffly 


42 


JOHN SILENCE 


to his feet and began to wander aimlessly and rest- 
lessly to and fro about the floor. Smoke followed him, 
padding quietly at his heels. Between them they made 
what seemed to be a deliberate search of the room. 

And, here, as he watched them, noting carefully 
every detail of the performance over the top of his 
book, yet making no effort to interfere, it seemed to 
the doctor that the first beginnings of a faint distress 
betrayed themselves in the collie, and in the cat the 
stirrings of a vague excitement. 

He observed them closely. The fog was thick in 
the air, and the tobacco smoke from his pipe added 
to its density; the furniture at the far end stood 
mistily, and where the shadows congregated in hanging 
clouds under the ceiling, it was difficult to see clearly 
at all ; the lamplight only reached to a level of five 
feet from the floor, above which came layers of com- 
parative darkness, so that the room appeared twice as 
lofty as it actually was. By means of the lamp and the 
fire, however, the carpet was everywhere clearly visible. 

The animals made their silent tour of the floor, 
sometimes the dog leading, sometimes the cat ; 
occasionally they looked at one another as though 
exchanging signals ; and once or twice, in spite of the 
limited space, he lost sight of one or other among 
the fog and the shadows. Their curiosity, it appeared 
to him, was something more than the excitement 
lurking in the unknown territory of a strange room ; 
yet, so far, it was impossible to test this, and he 
purposely kept his mind quietly receptive lest the 
smallest mental excitement on his part should com- 
municate itself to the animals and thus destroy the 
value of their independent behaviour. 

They made a very thorough journey, leaving no 


A PSYCHICAL INVASION 


43 


piece of furniture unexamined, or unsmelt. Flame 
led the way, walking slowly with lowered head, and 
Smoke followed demurely at his heels, making a 
transparent pretence of not being interested, yet 
missing nothing. And, at length, they returned, the 
old collie first, and came to rest on the mat before 
the fire. Flame rested his muzzle on his master’s 
knee, smiling beatifically while he patted the yellow 
head and spoke his name; and Smoke, coming a 
little later, pretending he came by chance, looked 
from the empty saucer to his face, lapped up the milk 
when it was given him to the last drop, and then 
sprang upon his knees and curled round for the sleep 
it had fully earned and intended to enjoy. 

Silence descended upon the room. Only the 
breathing of the dog upon the mat came through 
the deep stillness, like the pulse of time marking the 
minutes ; and the steady drip, drip of the fog outside 
upon the window-ledges dismally testified to the 
inclemency of the night beyond. And the soft 
crashings of the coals as the fire settled down into 
the grate became less and less audible as the fire sank 
and the flames resigned their fierceness. 

It was now well after eleven o’clock, and Dr. Silence 
devoted himself again to his book. He read the 
words on the printed page and took in their mean- 
ing superficially, yet without starting into life the 
correlations of thought and suggestion that should 
accompany interesting reading. Underneath, all the 
while, his mental energies were absorbed in watching, 
listening, waiting for what might come. He was not 
over sanguine himself, yet he did not wish to be 
taken by surprise. Moreover, the animals, his sensitive 
barometers, had incontinently gone to sleep. 


44 


JOHN SILENCE 


After reading a dozen pages, however, he realised 
that his mind was really occupied in reviewing the 
features of Pender’s extraordinary story, and that it 
was no longer necessary to steady his imagination by 
studying the dull paragraphs detailed in the pages 
before him. He laid down his book accordingly, and 
allowed his thoughts to dwell upon the features of 
the Case. Speculations as to the meaning, however, 
he rigorously suppressed, knowing that such thoughts 
would act upon his imagination like wind upon the 
glowing embers of a fire. 

As the night wore on the silence grew deeper and 
deeper, and only at rare intervals he heard the sound 
of wheels on the main road a hundred yards away, 
where the horses went at a walking pace owing to 
the density of the fog. The echo of pedestrian foot- 
steps no longer reached him, the clamour of occasional 
voices no longer came down the side street. The 
night, muffled by fog, shrouded by veils of ultimate 
mystery, hung about the haunted villa like a doom. 
Nothing in the house stirred. Stillness, in a thick 
blanket, lay over the upper storeys. Only the mist 
in the room grew more dense, he thought, and the 
damp cold more penetrating. Certainly, from time 
to time, he shivered. 

The collie, now deep in slumber, moved occasion- 
ally , — grunted, sighed, or twitched his legs in dreams. 
Smoke lay on his knees, a pool of warm, black fur, 
only the closest observation detecting the movement 
of his sleek sides. It was difficult to distinguish 
exactly where his head and body joined in that 
circle of glistening hair ; only a black satin nose and 
a tiny tip of pink tongue betrayed the secret. 

Dr. Silence watched him, and felt comfortable. 


A PSYCHICAL INVASION 


45 


The collie’s breathing was soothing. The fire was 
well built, and would burn for another two hours 
without attention. He was not conscious of the 
least nervousness. He particularly wished to remain 
in his ordinary and normal state of mind, and to 
force nothing. If sleep came naturally, he would let 
it come — and even welcome it. The coldness of the 
room, when the fire died down later, would be sure 
to wake him again ; and it would then be time 
enough to carry these sleeping barometers up to bed. 
From various psychic premonitions he knew quite 
well that the night would not pass without adventure ; 
but he did not wish to force its arrival ; and he 
wished to remain normal, and let the animals remain 
normal, so that, when it came, it would be unattended 
by excitement or by any straining of the attention. 
Many experiments had made him wise. And, for 
the rest, he had no fear. 

Accordingly, after a time, he did fall asleep as he 
had expected, and the last thing he remembered, 
before oblivion slipped up over his eyes like soft 
wool, was the picture of Flame stretching all four 
legs at once, and sighing noisily as he sought a more 
comfortable position for his paws and muzzle upon 
the mat. 

It was a good deal later when he became aware 
that a weight lay upon his chest, and that something 
was pencilling over his face and mouth. A soft touch 
on the cheek woke him. Something was patting 
him. 

He sat up with a jerk, and found himself staring 
straight into a pair of brilliant eyes, half green, half 
black. Smoke’s face lay level with his own ; and the 


46 


JOHN SILENCE 


cat had climbed up with its front paws upon his 
chest. 

The lamp had burned low and the fire was nearly 
out, yet Dr. Silence saw in a moment that the cat 
was in an excited state. It kneaded with its front 
paws into his chest, shifting from one to the other. 
He felt them prodding against him. It lifted a leg 
very carefully and patted his cheek gingerly. Its 
fur, he saw, was standing ridgewise upon its back ; 
the ears were flattened back somewhat ; the tail was 
switching sharply. The cat, of course, had wakened 
him with a purpose, and the instant he realised this, 
he set it upon the arm of the chair and sprang up 
with a quick turn to face the empty room behind 
him. By some curious instinct, his arms of their 
own accord assumed an attitude of defence in front 
of him, as though to ward off something that threat- 
ened his safety. Yet nothing was visible. Only 
shapes of fog hung about rather heavily in the air, 
moving slightly to and fro. 

His mind was now fully alert, and the last vestiges 
of sleep gone. He turned the lamp higher and peered 
about him. Two things he became aware of at once : 
one, that Smoke, while excited, was pleasurably ex- 
cited ; the other, that the collie was no longer visible 
upon the mat at his feet. He had crept away to 
the corner of the wall farthest from the window, 
and lay watching the room with wide-open eyes, in 
which lurked plainly something of alarm. 

Something in the dog’s behaviour instantly struck 
Dr. Silence as unusual, and, calling him by name, he 
moved across to pat him. Flame got up, wagged his 
tail, and came over slowly to the rug, uttering a low 
sound that was half growl, half whine. He was 


A PSYCHICAL INVASION 


4 7 


evidently perturbed about something, and his master 
was proceeding to administer comfort when his atten- 
tion was suddenly drawn to the antics of his other 
four-footed companion, the cat. 

And what he saw filled him with something like 
amazement. 

Smoke had jumped down from the back of the 
arm-chair and now occupied the middle of the carpet, 
where, with tail erect and legs stiff as ramrods, it was 
steadily pacing backwards and forwards in a narrow 
space, uttering, as it did so, those curious little 
guttural sounds of pleasure that only an animal of 
the feline species knows how to make expressive of 
supreme happiness. Its stiffened legs and arched 
back made it appear larger than usual, and the 
black visage wore a smile of beatific joy. Its eyes 
blazed magnificently ; it was in an ecstasy. 

At the end of every few paces it turned sharply 
and stalked back again along the same line, padding 
softly, and purring like a roll of little muffled drums. 
It behaved precisely as though it were rubbing 
against the ankles of some one who remained invisible. 
A thrill ran down the doctor’s spine as he stood and 
stared. His experiment was growing interesting at 
last. 

He called the collie’s attention to his friend’s 
performance to see whether he too was aware of 
anything standing there upon the carpet, and the 
dog’s behaviour was significant and corroborative. 
He came as far as his master’s knees and then 
stopped dead, refusing to investigate closely. In 
vain Dr. Silence urged him; he wagged his tail, 
whined a little, and stood in a half-crouching attitude, 
staring alternately at the cat and at his master’s face. 


48 


JOHN SILENCE 


He was, apparently, both puzzled and alarmed, and 
the whine went deeper and deeper down into his 
throat till it changed into an ugly snarl of awaken- 
ing anger. 

Then the doctor called to him in a tone of com- 
mand he had never known to be disregarded ; but 
still the dog, though springing up in response, 
declined to move nearer. He made tentative motions, 
pranced a little like a dog about to take to water, 
pretended to bark, and ran to and fro on the carpet. 
So far there was no actual fear in his manner, but 
he was uneasy and anxious, and nothing would 
induce him to go within touching distance of the 
walking cat. Once he made a complete circuit, but 
always carefully out of reach ; and in the end he 
returned to his master’s legs and rubbed vigorously 
against him. Flame did not like the performance 
at all : that much was quite clear. 

For several minutes John Silence watched the per- 
formance of the cat with profound attention and 
without interfering. Then he called to the animal 
by name. 

“ Smoke, you mysterious beastie, what in the world 
are you about ? ” he said, in a coaxing tone. 

The cat looked up at him for a moment, smiling 
in its ecstasy, blinking its eyes, but too happy to 
pause. He spoke to it again. He called to it several 
times, and each time it turned upon him its blazing 
eyes, drunk with inner delight, opening and shutting 
its lips, its body large and rigid with excitement. 
Yet it never for one instant paused in its short 
journeys to and fro. 

He noted exactly what it did : it walked, he saw, 
the same number of paces each time, some six or 


A PSYCHICAL INVASION 


49 


seven steps, and then it turned sharply and retraced 
them. By the pattern of the great roses in the 
carpet he measured it. It kept to the same direction 
and the same line. It behaved precisely as though 
it were rubbing against something solid. Un- 
doubtedly, there was something standing there on 
that strip of carpet, something invisible to the doctor, 
something that alarmed the dog, yet caused the cat 
unspeakable pleasure. 

“ Smokie ! ” he called again, “ Smokie, you black 
mystery, what is it excites you so ? ” 

Again the cat looked up at him for a brief second, 
and then continued its sentry-walk, blissfully happy, 
intensely preoccupied. And, for an instant, as he 
watched it, the doctor was aware that a faint uneasi- 
ness stirred in the depths of his own being, focusing 
itself for the moment upon this curious behaviour of 
the uncanny creature before him. 

There rose in him quite a new realisation of the 
mystery connected with the whole feline tribe, but es- 
pecially with that common member of it, the domestic 
cat — their hidden lives, their strange aloofness, their 
incalculable subtlety. How utterly remote from any- 
thing that human beings understood lay the sources 
of their elusive activities. As he watched the inde- 
scribable bearing of the little creature mincing along 
the strip of carpet under his eyes, coquetting with 
the powers of darkness, welcoming, maybe, some 
fearsome visitor, there stirred in his heart a feeling 
strangely akin to awe. Its indifference to human 
kind, its serene superiority to the obvious, struck 
him forcibly with fresh meaning; so remote, so 
inaccessible seemed the secret purposes of its real 
life, so alien to the blundering honesty of other 
4 


50 


JOHN SILENCE 


animals. Its absolute poise of bearing brought into 
his mind the opium-eater’s words that “ no dignity 
is perfect which does not at some point ally itself 
with the mysterious ” ; and he became suddenly 
aware that the presence of the dog in this foggy, 
haunted room on the top of Putney Hill was un- 
commonly welcome to him. He was glad to feel 
that Flame’s dependable personality was with him. 
The savage growling at his heels was a pleasant 
sound. He was glad to hear it. That marching cat 
made him uneasy. 

Finding that Smoke paid no further attention to 
his words, the doctor decided upon action. Would 
it rub against his leg, too? He would take it by 
surprise and see. 

He stepped quickly forward and placed himself 
upon the exact strip of carpet where it walked. 

But no cat is ever taken by surprise ! The moment 
he occupied the space of the Intruder, setting his 
feet on the woven roses midway in the line of travel, 
Smoke suddenly stopped purring and sat down. It 
lifted up its face with the most innocent stare 
imaginable of its green eyes. He could have sworn 
it laughed. It was a perfect child again. In a single 
second it had resumed its simple, domestic manner ; 
and it gazed at him in such a way that he almost 
felt Smoke was the normal being, and his was the 
eccentric behaviour that was being watched. It was 
consummate, the manner in which it brought about 
this change so easily and so quickly. 

“ Superb little actor ! ” he laughed in spite of him- 
self, and stooped to stroke the shining black back. 
But, in a flash, as he touched its fur, the cat turned 
and spat at him viciously, striking at his hand with one 


A PSYCHICAL INVASION 


5i 


paw. Then, with a hurried scutter of feet, it shot like 
a shadow across the floor and a moment later was 
calmly sitting over by the window-curtains washing 
its face as though nothing interested it in the 
whole world but the cleanness of its cheeks and 
whiskers. 

John Silence straightened himself up and drew a 
long breath. He realised that the performance was 
temporarily at an end. The collie, meanwhile, who 
had watched the whole proceeding with marked dis- 
approval, had now lain down again upon the mat by 
the fire, no longer growling. It seemed to the doctor 
just as though something that had entered the room 
while he slept, alarming the dog, yet bringing happi- 
ness to the cat, had now gone out again, leaving all 
as it was before. Whatever it was that excited its 
blissful attentions had retreated for the moment. 

He realised this intuitively. Smoke evidently 
realised it, too, for presently he deigned to march 
back to the fireplace and jump upon his master’s 
knees. Dr. Silence, patient and determined, settled 
down once more to his book. The animals soon 
slept; the fire blazed cheerfully; and the cold fog 
from outside poured into the room through every 
available chink and crannie. 

For a long time silence and peace reigned in the 
room and Dr. Silence availed himself of the quietness 
to make careful notes of what had happened. He 
entered for future use in other cases an exhaustive 
analysis of what he had observed, especially with 
regard to the effect upon the two animals. It is 
impossible here, nor would it be intelligible to the 
reader unversed in the knowledge of the region 
known to a scientifically trained psychic like Dr. 


52 


JOHN SILENCE 


Silence, to detail these observations. But to him it 
was clear, up to a certain point — and for the rest he 
must still wait and watch. So far, at least, he real- 
ised that while he slept in the chair — that is, while 
his will was dormant — the room had suffered intrusion 
from what he recognised as an intensely active Force, 
and might later be forced to acknowledge as some- 
thing more than merely a blind force, namely, a 
distinct personality. 

So far it had affected himself scarcely at all, but 
had acted directly upon the simpler organisms of the 
animals. It stimulated keenly the centres of the 
cat’s psychic being, inducing a state of instant happi- 
ness (intensifying its consciousness probably in the 
same way a drug or stimulant intensifies that of a 
human being) ; whereas it alarmed the less sensitive 
dog, causing it to feel a vague apprehension and 
distress. 

His own sudden action and exhibition of energy 
had served to disperse it temporarily, yet he felt 
convinced — the indications were not lacking even 
while he sat there making notes — that it still re- 
mained near to him, conditionally if not spatially, 
and was, as it were, gathering force for a second 
attack. 

And, further, he intuitively understood that the 
relations between the two animals had undergone a 
subtle change: that the cat had become immeasur- 
ably superior, confident, sure of itself in its own 
peculiar region, whereas Flame had been weakened by 
an attack he could not comprehend and knew not 
how to reply to. Though not yet afraid, he was 
defiant — ready to act against a fear that he felt to be 
approaching. He was no longer fatherly and pro- 


A PSYCHICAL INVASION 


53 

tective towards the cat. Smoke held the key to the 
situation ; and both he and the cat knew it. 

Thus, as the minutes passed, John Silence sat and 
waited, keenly on the alert, wondering how soon the 
attack would be renewed, and at what point it would 
be diverted from the animals and directed upon 
himself. 

The book lay on the floor beside him, his notes 
were complete. With one hand on the cat’s fur, and 
the dog’s front paws resting against his feet, the 
three of them dozed comfortably before the hot fire 
while the night wore on and the silence deepened 
towards midnight. 

It was well after one o’clock in the morning when 
Dr. Silence turned the lamp out and lighted the 
candle preparatory to going up to bed. Then 
Smoke suddenly woke with a loud sharp purr and 
sat up. It neither stretched, washed nor turned : it 
listened. And the doctor, watching it, realised that a 
certain indefinable change had come about that very 
moment in the room. A swift readjustment of the 
forces within the four walls had taken place — a new 
disposition of their personal equations. The balance 
was destroyed, the former harmony gone. Smoke, 
most sensitive of barometers, had been the first to 
feel it, but the dog was not slow to follow suit, for 
on looking down he noted that Flame was no longer 
asleep. He was lying with eyes wide open, and that 
same instant he sat up on his great haunches and 
began to growl. 

Dr. Silence was in the act of taking the matches 
to re-light the lamp when an audible movement in 
the room behind made him pause. Smoke leaped 
down from his knee and moved forward a few paces 


54 


JOHN SILENCE 


across the carpet. Then it stopped and stared 
fixedly; and the doctor stood up on the rug to 
watch. 

As he rose the sound was repeated, and he dis- 
covered that it was not in the room as he first thought, 
but outside, and that it came from more directions 
than one. There was a rushing, sweeping noise 
against the window-panes, and simultaneously a 
sound of something brushing against the door — out 
in the hall. Smoke advanced sedately across the 
carpet, twitching his tail, and sat down within a foot 
of the door. The influence that had destroyed the 
harmonious conditions of the room had apparently 
moved in advance of its cause. Clearly, something 
was about to happen. 

For the first time that night John Silence hesitated ; 
the thought of that dark narrow hall-way, choked 
with fog, and destitute of human comfort, was un- 
pleasant. He became aware of a faint creeping of 
his flesh. He knew, of course, that the actual open- 
ing of the door was not necessary to the invasion of 
the room that was about to take place, since neither 
doors nor windows, nor any other solid barriers could 
interpose an obstacle to what was seeking entrance. 
Yet the opening of the door would be significant and 
symbolic, and he distinctly shrank from it. 

But for a moment only. Smoke, turning with a 
show of impatience, recalled him to his purpose, and 
he moved past the sitting, watching creature, and 
deliberately opened the door to its full width. 

What subsequently happened, happened in the 
feeble and flickering light of the solitary candle on 
the mantelpiece. 

Through the opened door he saw the hall, dimly 


A PSYCHICAL INVASION 


55 


lit and thick with fog. Nothing, of course, was 
visible — nothing but the hat-stand, the African spears 
in dark lines upon the wall and the high-backed 
wooden chair standing grotesquely underneath on 
the oilcloth floor. For one instant the fog seemed 
to move and thicken oddly ; but he set that down to 
the score of the imagination. The door had opened 
upon nothing. 

Yet Smoke apparently thought otherwise, and the 
deep growling of the collie from the mat at the back 
of the room seemed to confirm his judgment. 

For, proud and self-possessed, the cat had again 
risen to his feet, and having advanced to the door, 
was now ushering some one slowly into the room. 
Nothing could have been more evident. He paced 
from side to side, bowing his little head with great 
empressement and holding his stiffened tail aloft like 
a flagstaff. He turned this way and that, mincing 
to and fro, and showing signs of supreme satisfaction. 
He was in his element. He welcomed the intrusion, 
and apparently reckoned that his companions, the 
doctor and the dog, would welcome it likewise. 

The Intruder had returned for a second attack. 

Dr. Silence moved slowly backwards and took up 
his position on the hearthrug, keying himself up to 
a condition of concentrated attention. 

He noted that Flame stood beside him, facing 
the room, with body motionless, and head moving 
swiftly from side to side with a curious swaying 
movement. His eyes were wide open, his back 
rigid, his neck and jaws thrust forward, his legs tense 
and ready to leap. Savage, ready for attack or 
defence, yet dreadfully puzzled and perhaps already 
a little cowed, he stood and stared, the hair on his 


56 


JOHN SILENCE 


spine and sides positively bristling outwards as though 
a wind played through them. In the dim firelight 
he looked like a great yellow-haired wolf, silent, eyes 
shooting dark fire, exceedingly formidable. It was 
Flame, the terrible. 

Smoke, meanwhile, advanced from the door 
towards the middle of the room, adopting the very 
slow pace of an invisible companion. A few feet 
away it stopped and began to smile and blink its 
eyes. There was something deliberately coaxing in 
its attitude as it stood there undecided on the carpet, 
clearly wishing to effect some sort of introduction 
between the Intruder and its canine friend and ally. 
It assumed its most winning manners, purring, 
smiling, looking persuasivly from one to the other, 
and making quick tentative steps first in one direction 
and then in the other. There had always existed 
such perfect understanding between them in every- 
thing. Surely Flame would appreciate Smoke’s 
intentions now, and acquiesce. 

But the old collie made no advances. He bared his 
teeth, lifting his lips till the gums showed, and stood 
stockstill with fixed eyes and heaving sides. The 
doctor moved a little farther back, watching intently 
the smallest movement, and it was just then he divined 
suddenly from the cat’s behaviour and attitude that 
it was not only a single companion it had ushered 
into the room, but several . It kept crossing over 
from one to the other, looking up at each in turn. 
It sought to win over the dog to friendliness with 
them all. The original Intruder had come back 
with reinforcements. And at the same time he 
further realised that the Intruder was something 
more than a blindly acting force, impersonal though 


A PSYCHICAL INVASION 


5 7 


destructive. It was a Personality, and moreover a 
great personality. And it was accompanied for the 
purposes of assistance by a host of other personalities, 
minor in degree, but similar in kind. 

He braced himself in the corner against the mantel- 
piece and waited, his whole being roused to defence, 
for he was now fully aware that the attack had 
spread to include himself as well as the animals, and 
he must be on the alert. He strained his eyes 
through the foggy atmosphere, trying in vain to see 
what the cat and dog saw; but the candlelight 
threw an uncertain and flickering light across the 
room and his eyes discerned nothing. On the floor 
Smoke moved softly in front of him like a black 
shadow, his eyes gleaming as he turned his head, 
still trying with many insinuating gestures and 
much purring to bring about the introductions he 
desired. 

But it was all in vain. Flame stood riveted to 
one spot, motionless as a figure carved in stone. 

Some minutes passed, during which only the cat 
moved, and then there came a sharp change. Flame 
began to back towards the wall. He moved his head 
from side to side as he went, sometimes turning to 
snap at something almost behind him. They were 
advancing upon him, trying to surround him. His 
distress became very marked from now onwards, 
and it seemed to the doctor that his anger merged into 
genuine terror and became overwhelmed by it. The 
savage growl sounded perilously like a whine, and 
more than once he tried to dive past his master’s legs, 
as though hunting for a way of escape. He was 
trying to avoid something that everywhere blocked 
the way. 


JOHN SILENCE 


58 

This terror of the indomitable fighter impressed 
the doctor enormously; yet also painfully; stirring 
his impatience ; for he had never before seen the dog 
show signs of giving in, and it distressed him to 
witness it. He knew, however, that he was not 
giving in easily, and understood that it was really 
impossible for him to gauge the animal’s sensations 
properly at all. What Flame felt, and saw, must be 
terrible indeed to turn him all at once into a coward. 
He faced something that made him afraid of more 
than his life merely. The doctor spoke a few quick 
words of encouragement to him, and stroked the 
bristling hair. But without much success. The 
collie seemed already beyond the reach of comfort 
such as that, and the collapse of the old dog followed 
indeed very speedily after this. 

And Smoke, meanwhile, remained behind, watching 
the advance, but not joining in it ; sitting, pleased 
and expectant, considering that all was going well 
and as it wished. It was kneading on the carpet 
with its front paws — slowly, laboriously, as though 
its feet were dipped in treacle. The sound its claws 
made as they caught in the threads was distinctly 
audible. It was still smiling, blinking, purring. 

Suddenly the collie uttered a poignant short bark 
and leaped heavily to one side. His bared teeth 
traced a line of whiteness through the gloom. The 
next instant he dashed past his master’s legs, almost 
upsetting his balance, and shot out into the room, 
where he went blundering wildly against walls and fur- 
niture. But that bark was significant ; the doctor had 
heard it before and knew what it meant : for it was 
the cry of the fighter against odds and it meant that 
the old beast had found his courage again. Possibly 


A PSYCHICAL INVASION 


59 


it was only the courage of despair, but at any rate the 
fighting would be terrific. And Dr. Silence under- 
stood, too, that he dared not interfere. Flame must 
fight his own enemies in his own way. 

But the cat, too, had heard that dreadful bark ; and 
it, too, had understood. This was more than it had 
bargained for. Across the dim shadows of that 
haunted room there must have passed some secret 
signal of distress between the animals. Smoke stood 
up and looked swiftly about him. He uttered a 
piteous meow and trotted smartly away into the 
greater darkness by the windows. What his object 
was only those endowed with the spirit-like intelligence 
of cats might know. But, at any rate, he had at last 
ranged himself on the side of his friend. And the 
little beast meant business. 

At the same moment the collie managed to gain 
the door. The doctor saw him rush through into 
the hall like a flash of yellow light. He shot across 
the oilcloth, and tore up the stairs, but in another 
second he appeared again, flying down the steps and 
landing at the bottom in a tumbling heap, whining, 
cringing, terrified. The doctor saw him slink back 
into the room again and crawl round by the wall 
towards the cat. Was, then, even the staircase 
occupied ? Did They stand also in the hall ? Was 
the whole house crowded from floor to ceiling ? 

The thought came to add to the keen distress he 
felt at the sight of the collie’s discomfiture. And, 
indeed, his own personal distress had increased 
in a marked degree during the past minutes, and 
continued to increase steadily to the climax. He 
recognised that the drain on his own vitality grew 
steadily, and that the attack was now directed against 


6o 


JOHN SILENCE 


himself even more than against the defeated dog, and 
the too much deceived cat. 

It all seemed so rapid and uncalculated after that 
— the events that took place in this little modern 
room at the top of Putney Hill between midnight 
and sunrise — that Dr. Silence was hardly able to 
follow and remember it all. It came about with such 
uncanny swiftness and terror; the light was so 
uncertain ; the movements of the black cat so difficult 
to follow on the dark carpet, and the doctor himself 
so weary and taken by surprise — that he found it 
almost impossible to observe accurately, or to recall 
afterwards precisely what it was he had seen or in 
what order the incidents had taken place. He never 
could understand what defect of vision on his part 
made it seem as though the cat had duplicated itself 
at first, and then increased indefinitely, so that there 
were at least a dozen of them darting silently about 
the floor, leaping softly on to chairs and tables, 
passing like shadows from the open door to the end 
of the room, all black as sin, with brilliant green eyes 
flashing fire in all directions. It was like the reflec- 
tions from a score of mirrors placed round the 
walls at different angles. Nor could he make out at 
the time why the size of the room seemed to have 
altered, grown much larger, and why it extended 
away behind him where ordinarily the wall should 
have been. The snarling of the enraged and terrified 
collie sounded sometimes so far away ; the ceiling 
seemed to have raised itself so much higher than 
before, and much of the furniture had changed in 
appearance and shifted marvellously. 

It was all so confused and confusing, as though the 
little room he knew had become merged and trans- 


A PSYCHICAL INVASION 


6 1 

formed into the dimensions of quite another chamber, 
that came to him, with its host of cats and its strange 
distances, in a sort of vision. 

But these changes came about a little later, and at 
a time when his attention was so concentrated upon 
the proceedings of Smoke and the collie, that he only 
observed them, as it were, subconsciously. And the 
excitement, the flickering candlelight, the distress he 
felt for the collie, and the distorting atmosphere of 
fog were the poorest possible allies to careful 
observation. 

At first he was only aware that the dog was 
repeating his short dangerous bark from time to time, 
snapping viciously at the empty air, a foot or so from 
the ground. Once, indeed, he sprang upwards and 
forwards, working furiously with teeth and paws, 
and with a noise like wolves fighting, but only to 
dash back the next minute against the wall behind 
him. Then, after lying still for a bit, he rose to a 
crouching position as though to spring again, snarling 
horribly and making short half-circles with lowered 
head. And Smoke all the while meowed piteously 
by the window as though trying to draw the attack 
upon himself. 

Then it was that the rush of the whole dreadful 
business seemed to turn aside from the dog and 
direct itself upon his own person. The collie had 
made another spring and fallen back with a crash 
into the corner, where he made noise enough in his 
savage rage to waken the dead before he fell to 
whining and then finally lay still. And directly 
afterwards the doctor’s own distress became intoler- 
ably acute. He had made a half movement forward 
to come to the rescue when a veil that was denser 


6 2 


JOHN SILENCE 


than mere fog seemed to drop down over the scene, 
draping room, walls, animals and fire in a mist of 
darkness and folding also about his own mind. 
Other forms moved silently across the field of vision, 
forms that he recognised from previous experiments, 
and welcomed not. Unholy thoughts began to 
crowd into his brain, sinister suggestions of evil pre- 
sented themselves seductively. Ice seemed to settle 
about his heart, and his mind trembled. He began 
to lose memory — memory of his identity, of where 
he was, of what he ought to do. The very founda- 
tions of his strength were shaken. His will seemed 
paralysed. 

And it was then that the room filled with this 
horde of cats, all dark as the night, all silent, all with 
lamping eyes of green fire. The dimensions of the 
place altered and shifted. He was in a much larger 
space. The whining of the dog sounded far away, 
and all about him the cats flew busily to and fro, 
silently playing their tearing, rushing game of evil, 
weaving the pattern of their dark purpose upon the 
floor. He strove hard to collect himself and re- 
member the words of power he had made use of 
before in similar dread positions where his dangerous 
practice had sometimes led ; but he could recall 
nothing consecutively ; a mist lay over his mind and 
memory; he felt dazed and his forces scattered. 
The deeps within were too troubled for healing power 
to come out of them. 

It was glamour, of course, he realised afterwards, 
the strong glamour thrown upon his imagination by 
some powerful personality behind the veil ; but at the 
time he was not sufficiently aware of this and, as with 
all true glamour, was unable to grasp where the true 


A PSYCHICAL INVASION 


63 


ended and the false began. He was caught moment- 
arily in the same vortex that had sought to lure the 
cat to destruction through its delight, and threatened 
utterly to overwhelm the dog through its terror. 

There came a sound in the chimney behind him 
like wind booming and tearing its way down. The 
windows rattled. The candle flickered and went out. 
The glacial atmosphere closed round him with the 
cold of death, and a great rushing sound swept by 
overhead as though the ceiling had lifted to a great 
height. He heard the door shut. Far away it 
sounded. He felt lost, shelterless in the depths of 
his soul. Yet still he held out and resisted while 
the climax of the fight came nearer and nearer. . . . 
He had stepped into the stream of forces awakened 
by Pender and he knew that he must withstand them 
to the end or come to a conclusion that it was not 
good for a man to come to. Something from the 
region of utter cold was upon him. 

And then quite suddenly, through the confused 
mists about him, there slowly rose up the Personality 
that had been all the time directing the battle. Some 
force entered his being that shook him as the tem- 
pest shakes a leaf, and close against his eyes — clean 
level with his face — he found himself staring into the 
wreck of a vast dark Countenance, a countenance that 
was terrible even in its ruin. 

For ruined it was, and terrible it was, and the 
mark of spiritual evil was branded everywhere upon 
its broken features. Eyes, face and hair rose level 
with his own, and for a space of time he never could 
properly measure, or determine, these two, a man 
and a woman, looked straight into each other’s^, 
visages and down into each others hearts. 


64 


JOHN SILENCE 


And John Silence, the soul with the good, unselfish 
motive, held his own against the dark discarnate 
woman whose motive was pure evil, and whose soul 
was on the side of the Dark Powers. 

It was the climax that touched the depth of power 
within him and began to restore him slowly to his 
own. He was conscious, of course, of effort, and yet 
it seemed no superhuman one, for he had recognised 
the character of his opponent’s power, and he called 
upon the good within him to meet and overcome it. 
The inner forces stirred and trembled in response to 
his call. They did not at first come readily as was 
their habit, for under the spell of glamour they had 
already been diabolically lulled into inactivity, but 
come they eventually did, rising out of the inner 
spiritual nature he had learned with so much time 
and pain to awaken to life. And power and con- 
fidence came with them. He began to breathe 
deeply and regularly, and at the same time to ab- 
sorb into himself the forces opposed to him, and to 
turn them to his own account . By ceasing to resist, 
and allowing the deadly stream to pour into him 
unopposed, he used the very power supplied by his 
adversary and thus enormously increased his own. 

For this spiritual alchemy he had learned. He 
understood that force ultimately is everywhere one 
and the same ; it is the motive behind that makes it 
good or evil ; and his motive was entirely unselfish. 
He knew — provided he was not first robbed of self- 
control — how vicariously to absorb these evil 
radiations into himself and change them magically 
into his own good purposes. And, since his motive 
v was pure and his soul fearless, they could not work 
him harm. 


A PSYCHICAL INVASION 


65 


Thus he stood in the main stream of evil unwit- 
tingly attracted by Pender, deflecting its course upon 
himself ; and after passing through the purifying 
filter of his own unselfishness these energies could 
only add to his store of experience, of knowledge, 
and therefore of power. And, as his self-control 
returned to him, he gradually accomplished this 
purpose, even though trembling while he did so. 

Yet the struggle was severe, and in spite of the 
freezing chill of the air, the perspiration poured down 
his face. Then, by slow degrees, the dark and 
dreadful countenance faded, the glamour passed 
from his soul, the normal proportions returned to 
walls and ceiling, the forms melted back into the 
fog, and the whirl of rushing shadow-cats disappeared 
whence they came. 

And with the return of the consciousness of his 
own identity John Silence was restored to the full 
control of his own will-power. In a deep, modulated 
voice he began to utter certain rhythmical sounds 
that slowly rolled through the air like a rising sea, 
filling the room with powerful vibratory activities 
that whelmed all irregularities of lesser vibrations in 
its own swelling tone. He made certain sigils, 
gestures and movements at the same time. For 
several minutes he continued to utter these words, 
until at length the growing volume dominated the 
whole room and mastered the manifestation of all 
that opposed it. For just as he understood the 
spiritual alchemy that can transmute evil forces by 
raising them into higher channels, so he knew from 
long study the occult use of sound, and its direct 
effect upon the plastic region wherein the powers 
of spiritual evil work their fell purposes. Harmony 
5 


66 


JOHN SILENCE 


was restored first of all to his own soul, and thence 
to the room and all its occupants. 

And, after himself, the first to recognise it was the 
old dog lying in his corner. Flame began suddenly 
uttering sounds of pleasure, that “ something ” between 
a growl and a grunt that dogs make upon being 
restored to their master’s confidence. Dr. Silence 
heard the thumping of the collie’s tail against the 
ground. And the grunt and the thumping touched 
the depth of affection in the man’s heart, and gave 
him some inkling of what agonies the dumb creature 
had suffered. 

Next, from the shadows by the window, a somewhat 
shrill purring announced the restoration of the cat 
to its normal state. Smoke was advancing across 
the carpet. He seemed very pleased with himself, 
and smiled with an expression of supreme innocence. 
He was no shadow-cat, but real and full of his usual 
and perfect self-possession. He marched along, 
picking his way delicately, but with a stately dignity 
that suggested his ancestry with the majesty of 
Egypt. His eyes no longer glared; they shone 
steadily before him ; they radiated, not excitement, 
but knowledge. Clearly he was anxious to make 
amends for the mischief to which he had unwittingly 
lent himself owing to his subtle and electric con- 
stitution. 

Still uttering his sharp high purrings he marched 
up to his master and rubbed vigorously against his 
legs. Then he stood on his hind feet and pawed 
his knees and stared beseechingly up into his face. 
He turned his head towards the corner where the 
collie still lay, thumping his tail feebly and pathetic- 
ally. 


A PSYCHICAL INVASION 


67 


John Silence understood. He bent down and 
stroked the creature’s living fur, noting the line of 
bright blue sparks that followed the motion of his 
hand down its back. And then they advanced 
together towards the corner where the dog was. 

Smoke went first and put his nose gently against 
his friend’s muzzle, purring while he rubbed, and 
uttering little soft sounds of affection in his throat. 
The doctor lit the candle and brought it over. He 
saw the collie lying on its side against the wall ; it 
was utterly exhausted, and foam still hung about 
its jaws. Its tail and eyes responded to the sound 
of its name, but it was evidently very weak and 
overcome. Smoke continued to rub against its cheek 
and nose and eyes, sometimes even standing on its 
body and kneading into the thick yellow hair. Flame 
replied from time to time by little licks of the tongue, 
most of them curiously misdirected. 

But Dr. Silence felt intuitively that something 
disastrous had happened, and his heart was wrung. 
He stroked the dear body, feeling it over for bruises 
or broken bones, but finding none. He fed it with 
what remained of the sandwiches and milk, but the 
creature clumsily upset the saucer and lost the 
sandwiches between its paws, so that the doctor had 
to feed it with his own hand. And all the while 
Smoke meowed piteously. 

Then John Silence began to understand. He went 
across to the farther side of the room and called 
aloud to it. 

“ Flame, old man ! come ! ” 

At any other time the dog would have been upon 
him in an instant, barking and leaping to the shoulder 
And even now he got up, though heavily and 


68 


JOHN SILENCE 


awkwardly, to his feet. He started to run, wagging 
his tail more briskly. He collided first with a chair, 
and then ran straight into a table. Smoke trotted 
close at his side, trying his very best to guide him. 
But it was useless. Dr. Silence had to lift him up 
into his own arms and carry him like a baby. For he 
was blind. 


Ill 

It was a week later when John Silence called to see 
the author in his new house, and found him well on 
the way to recovery and already busy again with his 
writing. The haunted look had left his eyes, and he 
seemed cheerful and confident. 

“Humour restored?” laughed the doctor, as soon 
as they were comfortably settled in the room over- 
looking the Park. 

“ I’ve had no trouble since I left that dreadful 
place,” returned Pender gratefully ; “ and thanks to 


The doctor stopped him with a gesture. 

“Never mind that,” he said, “we’ll discuss your 
new plans afterwards, and my scheme for relieving 
you of the house and helping you settle elsewhere. 
Of course it must be pulled down, for it’s not fit for 
any sensitive person to live in, and any other tenant 
might be afflicted in the same way you were. 
Although, personally, I think the evil has exhausted 
itself by now.” 

He told the astonished author something of his 
experiences in it with the animals. 

“ I don’t pretend to understand,” Pender said, 
when the account was finished, “ but I and my wife 
are intensely relieved to be free of it all. Only I 


A PSYCHICAL INVASION 


69 


must say I should like to know something of the 
former history of the house. When we took it six 
months ago I heard no word against it.” 

Dr. Silence drew a typewritten paper from his 
pocket. 

“ I can satisfy your curiosity to some extent,” he 
said, running his eye over the sheets, and then 
replacing them in his coat ; “ for by my secretary’s 
investigations I have been able to check certain 
information obtained in the hypnotic trance by a 
^sensitive ’ who helps me in such cases. The former 
occupant who haunted you appears to have been a 
woman of singularly atrocious life and character who 
finally suffered death by hanging, after a series of 
crimes that appalled the whole of England and only 
came to light by the merest chance. She came to 
her end in the year 1798, for it was not this particular 
house she lived in, but a much larger one that then 
stood upon the site it now occupies, and was then, 
of course, not in London, but in the country. She 
was a person of intellect, possessed of a powerful, 
trained will, and of consummate audacity, and I am 
convinced availed herself of the resources of the 
lower magic to attain her ends. This goes far to 
explain the virulence of the attack upon yourself, 
and why she is still able to carry on after death the 
evil practices that formed her main purpose during 
life.” 

“You think that after death a soul can still con- 
sciously direct ” gasped the author. 

“ I think, as I told you before, that the forces of 
a powerful personality may still persist after death 
in the line of their original momentum,” replied the 
doctor ; “ and that strong thoughts and purposes can 


70 


JOHN SILENCE 


still react upon suitably prepared brains long aftei 
their originators have passed away. 

“If you knew anything of magic,” he pursued, “ you 
would know that thought is dynamic, and that it 
may call into existence forms and pictures that may 
well exist for hundreds of years. For, not far removed 
from the region of our human life, is another region 
where floats the waste and drift of all the centuries, the 
limbo of the shells of the dead ; a densely populated 
region crammed with horror and abomination of all 
descriptions, and sometimes galvanised into active 
life again by the will of a trained manipulator, a 
mind versed in the practices of lower magic. That 
this woman understood its vile commerce, I am per- 
suaded, and the forces she set going during her life 
have simply been accumulating ever since, and would 
have continued to do so had they not been drawn down 
upon yourself, and afterwards discharged and satisfied 
through me. 

“Anything might have brought down the attack, 
for, besides drugs, there are certain violent emotions, 
certain moods of the soul, certain spiritual fevers, 
if I may so call them, which directly open the inner 
being to a cognisance of this astral region I have 
mentioned. In your case it happened to be a 
peculiarly potent drug that did it. 

“ But now, tell me,” he added, after a pause, hand- 
ing to the perplexed author a pencil-drawing he had 
made of the dark countenance that had appeared to 
him during the night on Putney Hill — “ tell me if you 
recognise this face ? ” 

Pender looked at the drawing closely, greatly 
astonished. He shuddered a little as he looked. 

“Undoubtedly,” he said, “it is the face I kept 


A PSYCHICAL INVASION 7 1 

trying to draw — dark, with the great mouth and 
jaw, and the drooping eye. That is the woman.” 

Dr. Silence then produced from his pocket-book 
an old-fashioned woodcut of the same person which 
his secretary had unearthed from the records of the 
Newgate Calendar. The woodcut and the pencil 
drawing were two different aspects of the same 
dreadful visage. The men compared them for some 
moments in silence. 

“ It makes me thank God for the limitations of 
our senses,” said Pender quietly, with a sigh ; “ con- 
tinuous clairvoyance must be a sore affliction.” 

“ It is indeed,” returned John Silence significantly, 
“and if all the people nowadays who claim to be 
clairvoyant were really so, the statistics of suicide 
and lunacy would be considerably higher than they 
are. It is little wonder,” he added, “ that your sense 
of humour was clouded, with the mind-forces of that 
dead monster trying to use your brain for their dis- 
semination. You have had an interesting adventure, 
Mr. Felix Pender, and, let me add, a fortunate 
escape.” 

The author was about to renew his thanks when 
there came a sound of scratching at the door, and 
the doctor sprang up quickly. 

“ It’s time for me to go. I left my dog on the 
step, but I suppose ” 

Before he had time to open the door, it had yielded 
to the pressure behind it and flew wide open to 
admit a great yellow-haired collie. The dog, wagging 
his tail and contorting his whole body with delight, 
tore across the floor and tried to leap up upon his 
owner’s breast. And there was laughter and happiness 
in the old eyes ; for they were clear again as the day. 








CASE II 

ANCIENT SORCERIES 


73 












CASE II 


ANCIENT SORCERIES 

I 

There are, it would appear, certain wholly unre- 
markable persons, with none of the characteristics 
that invite adventure, who yet once or twice in the 
course of their smooth lives undergo an experience 
so strange that the world catches its breath — and 
looks the other way ! And it was cases of this kind, 
perhaps, more than any other, that fell into the wide- 
spread net of John Silence, the psychic doctor, and, 
appealing to his deep humanity, to his patience, and 
to his great qualities of spiritual sympathy, led often 
to the revelation of problems of the strangest com- 
plexity, and of the profoundest possible human 
interest. 

Matters that seemed almost too curious and 
fantastic for belief he loved to trace to their hidden 
sources. To unravel a tangle in the very soul of 
things — and to release a suffering human soul in the 
process — was with him a veritable passion. And the 
knots he untied were, indeed, often passing strange. 

The world, of course, asks for some plausible 
basis to which it can attach credence — something it 
can, at least, pretend to explain. The adventurous 

75 


76 


JOHN SILENCE 


type it can understand : such people carry about 
with them an adequate explanation of their exciting 
lives, and their characters obviously drive them into 
the circumstances which produce the adventures. It 
expects nothing else from them, and is satisfied. But 
dull, ordinary folk have no right to out-of-the-way 
experiences, and the world having been led to expect 
otherwise, is disappointed with them, not to say 
shocked. Its complacent judgment has been rudely 
disturbed. 

“ Such a thing happen to that man ! ” it cries — 
“ a commonplace person like that ! It is too absurd ! 
There must be something wrong ! ” 

Yet there could be no question that something 
did actually happen to little Arthur Vezin, something 
of the curious nature he described to Dr. Silence. 
Outwardly, or inwardly, it happened beyond a doubt, 
and in spite of the jeers of his few friends who heard 
the tale, and observed wisely that “ such a thing might 
perhaps have come to Iszard, that crack-brained 
Iszard, or to that odd fish Minski, but it could never 
have happened to commonplace little Vezin, who was 
fore-ordained to live and die according to scale.” 

But, whatever his method of death was, Vezin 
certainly did not “ live according to scale ” so far as 
this particular event in his otherwise uneventful life 
was concerned ; and to hear him recount it, and 
watch his pale delicate features change, and hear his 
voice grow softer and more hushed as he proceeded, 
was to know the conviction that his halting words 
perhaps failed sometimes to convey. He lived the 
thing over again each time he told it. His whole 
personality became muffled in the recital. It subdued 
him more than ever, so that the tale became a lengthy 


ANCIENT SORCERIES 


77 


apology for an experience that he deprecated. He 
appeared to excuse himself and ask your pardon for 
having dared to take part in so fantastic an episode. 
For little Vezin was a timid, gentle, sensitive soul, 
rarely able to assert himself, tender to man and beast, 
and almost constitutionally unable to say No, or to 
claim many things that should rightly have been his. 
His whole scheme of life seemed utterly remote from 
anything more exciting than missing a train or losing 
an umbrella on an omnibus. And when this curious 
event came upon him he was already more years 
beyond forty than his friends suspected or he cared 
to admit. 

John Silence, who heard him speak of his ex- 
perience more than once, said that he sometimes 
left out certain details and put in others; yet they 
were all obviously true. The whole scene was 
unforgettably cinematographed on to his mind. None 
of the details were imagined or invented. And when 
he told the story with them all complete, the effect 
was undeniable. His appealing brown eyes shone, 
and much of the charming personality, usually so 
carefully repressed, came forward and revealed itself. 
His modesty was always there, of course, but in the 
telling he forgot the present and allowed himself to 
appear almost vividly as he lived again in the past 
of his adventure. 

He was on the way home when it happened, 
crossing northern France from some mountain trip 
or other where he buried himself solitary-wise every 
summer. He had nothing but an unregistered bag 
in the rack, and the train was jammed to suffocation, 
most of the passengers being unredeemed holiday 
English. He disliked them, not because they were 


JOHN SILENCE 


78 

his fellow-countrymen, but because they were noisy 
and obtrusive, obliterating with their big limbs and 
tweed clothing all the quieter tints of the day that 
brought him satisfaction and enabled him to melt into 
insignificance and forget that he was anybody. These 
English clashed about him like a brass band, making 
him feel vaguely that he ought to be more self-assertive 
and obstreperous, and that he did not claim insist- 
ently enough all kinds of things that he didn’t want 
and that were really valueless, such as corner seats, 
windows up or down, and so forth. 

So that he felt uncomfortable in the train, and 
wished the journey were over and he was back again 
living with his unmarried sister in Surbiton. 

And when the train stopped for ten panting 
minutes at the little station in northern France, and 
he got out to stretch his legs on the platform, and 
saw to his dismay a further batch of the British Isles 
debouching from another train, it suddenly seemed 
impossible to him to continue the journey. Even his 
flabby soul revolted, and the idea of staying a night 
in the little town and going on next day by a slower, 
emptier train, flashed into his mind. The guard was 
already shouting “ en voiture ” and the corridor of his 
compartment was already packed when the thought 
came to him. And, for once, he acted with decision 
and rushed to snatch his bag. 

Finding the corridor and steps impassable, he 
tapped at the window (for he had a corner seat) and 
begged the Frenchman who sat opposite to hand his 
luggage out to him, explaining in his wretched 
French that he intended to break the journey there. 
And this elderly Frenchman, he declared, gave him 
a look, half of warning, half of reproach, that to his 


ANCIENT SORCERIES 


79 


dying day he could never forget ; handed the bag 
through the window of the moving train ; and at the 
same time poured into his ears a long sentence, spoken 
rapidly and low, of which he was able to comprehend 
only the last few words : “ d cause du sommeil et d 
cause des chats” 

In reply to Dr. Silence, whose singular psychic 
acuteness at once seized upon this Frenchman as a 
vital point in the adventure, Vezin admitted that the 
man had impressed him favourably from the begin- 
ning, though without being able to explain why. 
They had sat facing one another during the four 
hours of the journey, and though no conversation had 
passed between them — Vezin was timid about his 
stuttering French — he confessed that his eyes were 
being continually drawn to his face, almost, he felt, 
to rudeness, and that each, by a dozen nameless little 
politenesses and attentions, had evinced the desire 
to be kind. The men liked each other and their 
personalities did not clash, or would not have 
clashed had they chanced to come to terms of ac- 
quaintance. The Frenchman, indeed, seemed to 
have exercised a silent protective influence over the 
insignificant little Englishman, and without words or 
gestures betrayed that he wished him well and would 
gladly have been of service to him. 

“ And this sentence that he hurled at you after the 
bag?” asked John Silence, smiling that peculiarly 
sympathetic smile that always melted the prejudices 
of his patient, “were you unable to follow it 
exactly ? ” 

“It was so quick and low T and vehement,” explained 
Vezin, in his small voice, “ that I missed practically 
the whole of it. I only caught the few words at the 


8o 


JOHN SILENCE 


very end, because he spSke them so clearly, and his 
face was bent down out of the carriage window so 
near to mine.” 

“ * A cause du sommeil et a cause des chats ’ ? ” re- 
peated Dr. Silence, as though half speaking to himself. 

“ That’s it exactly,” said Vezin ; “ which, I take it, 
means something like ‘ because of sleep and because 
of the cats,’ doesn’t it ? ” 

“ Certainly, that’s how I should translate it,” the 
doctor observed shortly, evidently not wishing to 
interrupt more than necessary. 

“And the rest of the sentence — all the first part 
I couldn’t understand, I mean — was a warning not 
to do something — not to stop in the town, or at 
some particular place in the town, perhaps. That 
was the impression it made on me.” 

Then, of course, the train rushed off, and left 
Vezin standing on the platform alone and rather 
forlorn. 

The little town climbed in straggling fashion up a 
sharp hill rising out of the plain at the back of the 
station, and was crowned by the twin towers of the 
ruined cathedral peeping over the summit. From the 
station itself it looked uninteresting and modern, but 
the fact was that the mediaeval position lay out of 
sight just beyond the crest. And once he reached the 
top and entered the old streets, he stepped clean out 
of modern life into a bygone century. The noise 
and bustle of the crowded train seemed days away. 
The spirit of this silent hill-town, remote from 
tourists and motor-cars, dreaming its own quiet life 
under the autumn sun, rose up and cast its spell 
upon him. Long before he recognised this spell he 
acted under it. He walked softly, almost on tiptoe, 


ANCIENT SORCERIES 


8 1 


down the winding narrow streets where the gables 
all but met over his head, and he entered the door- 
way of the solitary inn with a deprecating and 
modest demeanour that was in itself an apology for 
intruding upon the place and disturbing its dream. 

At first, however, Vezin said, he noticed very little 
of all this. The attempt at analysis came much 
later. What struck him then was only the delightful 
contrast of the silence and peace after the dust and 
noisy rattle of the train. He felt soothed and 
stroked like a cat. 

“ Like a cat, you said?” interrupted John Silence, 
quickly catching him up. 

“Yes. At the very start I felt that.” He laughed 
apologetically. “ I felt as though the warmth and 
the stillness and the comfort made me purr. It 
seemed to be the general mood of the whole place — 
then.” 

The inn, a rambling ancient house, the atmosphere 
of the old coaching days still about it, apparently did 
not welcome him too warmly. He felt he was only 
tolerated, he said. But it was cheap and comfortable, 
and the delicious cup of afternoon tea he ordered at 
once made him feel really very pleased with himself 
for leaving the train in this bold, original way. For 
to him it had seemed bold and original. He felt 
something of a dog. His room, too, soothed him 
with its dark panelling and low irregular ceiling, and 
the long sloping passage that led to it seemed the 
natural pathway to a real Chamber of Sleep — a little 
dim cubby hole out of the world where noise could 
not enter. It looked upon the courtyard at the back. 
It was all very charming, and made him think of 
himself as dressed in very soft velvet somehow, and 
6 


82 


JOHN SILENCE 


the floors seemed padded, the walls provided with 
cushions. The sounds of the streets could not pene- 
trate there. It was an atmosphere of absolute rest 
that surrounded him. 

On engagingthe two-franc room he had interviewed 
the only person who seemed to be about that sleepy 
afternoon, an elderly waiter with Dundreary whiskers 
and a drowsy courtesy, who had ambled lazily to- 
wards him across the stone yard; but on coming 
downstairs again for a little promenade in the town 
before dinner he encountered the proprietress herself. 
She was a large woman whose hands, feet, and features 
seemed to swim towards him out of a sea of person. 
They emerged, so to speak. But she had great dark, 
vivacious eyes that counteracted the bulk of her 
body, and betrayed the fact that in reality she was 
both vigorous and alert. When he first caught sight 
of her she was knitting in a low chair against the 
sunlight of the wall, and something at once made 
him see her as a great tabby cat, dozing, yet awake, 
heavily sleepy, and yet at the same time prepared 
for instantaneous action. A great mouser on the 
watch occurred to him. 

She took him in with a single comprehensive glance 
that was polite without being cordial. Her neck, he 
noticed, was extraordinarily supple in spite of its 
proportions, for it turned so easily to follow him, and 
the head it carried bowed so very flexibly. 

“But when she looked at me, you know,” said 
Vezin, with that little apologetic smile in his brown 
eyes, and that faintly deprecating gesture of the 
shoulders that was characteristic of him, “the odd 
notion came to me that really she had intended to 
make quite a different movement, and that with a 


ANCIENT SORCERIES 


83 


single bound she could have leaped at me across the 
width of that stone yard and pounced upon me like 
some huge cat upon a mouse” 

He laughed a little soft laugh, and Dr. Silence made 
a note in his book without interrupting, while Vezin 
proceeded in a tone as though he feared he had al- 
ready told too much and more than we could believe. 

“Very soft, yet very active she was, for all her 
size and mass, and I felt she knew what I was doing 
even after I had passed and was behind her back. 
She spoke to me, and her voice was smooth and 
running. She asked if I had my luggage, and was 
comfortable in my room, and then added that dinner 
was at seven o’clock, and that they were very early 
people in this little country town. Clearly, she 
intended to convey that late hours were not encour- 
aged.” 

Evidently, she contrived by voice and manner to give 
him the impression that here he would be “ managed,” 
that everything would be arranged and planned for 
him, and that he had nothing to do but fall into the 
groove and obey. No decided action or sharp 
personal effort would be looked for from him. It 
was the very reverse of the train. He walked 
quietly out into the street feeling soothed and 
peaceful. He realised that he was in a milieu that 
suited him and stroked him the right way. It was 
so much easier to be obedient. He began to purr 
again, and to feel that all the town purred with him. 

About the streets of that little town he meandered 
gently, falling deeper and deeper into the spirit of 
repose that characterised it. With no special aim he 
wandered up and down, and to and fro. The Sep- 
tember sunshine fell slantingly over the roofs. Down 


8 4 


JOHN SILENCE 


winding alleyways, fringed with tumbling gables and 
open casements, he caught fairylike glimpses of the 
great plain below, and of the meadows and yellow 
copses lying like a dream-map in the haze. The 
spell of the past held very potently here, he felt. 

The streets were full of picturesquely garbed men 
and women, all busy enough, going their respective 
ways ; but no one took any notice of him or turned 
to stare at his obviously English appearance. He 
was even able to forget that with his tourist appear- 
ance he was a false note in a charming picture, and 
he melted more and more into the scene, feeling 
delightfully insignificant and unimportant and unself- 
conscious. It was like becoming part of a softly- 
coloured dream which he did not even realise to be 
a dream. 

On the eastern side the hill fell away more sharply, 
and the plain below ran off rather suddenly into a 
sea of gathering shadows in which the little patches 
of woodland looked like islands and the stubble fields 
like deep water. Here he strolled along the old 
ramparts of ancient fortifications that once had been 
formidable, but now were only vision-like with their 
charming mingling of broken grey walls and wayward 
vine and ivy. From the broad coping on which he 
sat for a moment, level with the rounded tops of 
clipped plane trees, he saw the esplanade far below 
lying in shadow. Here and there a yellow sunbeam 
crept in and lay upon the fallen yellow leaves, and 
from the height he looked down and saw that the 
townsfolk were walking to and fro in the cool of 
the evening. He could just hear the sound of their 
slow footfalls, and the murmur of their voices floated 
up to him through the gaps between the trees. The 


ANCIENT SORCERIES 85 

figures looked like shadows as he caught glimpses of 
their quiet movements far below. 

He sat there for some time pondering, bathed in 
the waves of murmurs and half-lost echoes that rose 
to his ears, muffled by the leaves of the plane trees. 
The whole town, and the little hill out of which it 
grew as naturally as an ancient wood, seemed to him 
like a being lying there half asleep on the plain and 
crooning to itself as it dozed. 

And, presently, as he sat lazily melting into its 
dream, a sound of horns and strings and wood instru- 
ments rose to his ears, and the town band began to 
play at the far end of the crowded terrace below to the 
accompaniment of a very soft, deep-throated drum. 
Vezin was very sensitive to music, knew about it intelli- 
gently, and had even ventured, unknown to his friends, 
upon the composition of quiet melodies with low- 
running chords which he played to himself with the 
soft pedal when no one was about. And this music 
floating up through the trees from an invisible and 
doubtless very picturesque band of the townspeople 
wholly charmed him. He recognised nothing that 
they played, and it sounded as though they were 
simply improvising without a conductor. No definitely 
marked time ran through the pieces, which ended 
and began oddly after the fashion of wind through 
an ^Eolian harp. It was part of the place and scene, 
just as the dying sunlight and faintly-breathing wind 
were part of the scene and hour, and the mellow 
notes of old-fashioned plaintive horns, pierced here 
and there by the sharper strings, all half smothered 
by the continuous booming of the deep drum, touched 
his soul with a curiously potent spell that was almost 
too engrossing to be quite pleasant. 


86 


JOHN SILENCE 


There was a certain queer sense of bewitchment in 
it all. The music seemed to him oddly unartificial. It 
made him think of trees swept by the wind, of night 
breezes singing among wires and chimney-stacks, or 
in the rigging of invisible ships ; or — and the simile 
leaped up in his thoughts with a sudden sharpness 
of suggestion — a chorus of animals, of wild creatures, 
somewhere in desolate places of the world, crying 
and singing as animals will, to the moon. He could 
fancy he heard the wailing, half-human cries of cats 
upon the tiles at night, rising and falling with weird 
intervals of sound, and this music, muffled by distance 
and the trees, made him think of a queer company 
of these creatures on some roof far away in the sky, 
uttering their solemn music to one another and the 
moon in chorus. 

It was, he felt at the time, a singular image to 
occur to him, yet it expressed his sensation pictorially 
better than anything else. The instruments played 
such impossibly odd intervals, and the crescendos and 
diminuendos were so very suggestive of cat-land on the 
tiles at night, rising swiftly, dropping without warning 
to deep notes again, and all in such strange confusion 
of discords and accords. But, at the same time 
a plaintive sweetness resulted on the whole, and 
the discords of these half-broken instruments were 
so singular that they did not distress his musical 
soul like fiddles out of tune. 

He listened a long time, wholly surrendering him- 
self as his character was, and then strolled homewards 
in the dusk as the air grew chilly. 

“ There was nothing to alarm ? ” put in Dr. Silence 
briefly. 

“ Absolutely nothing,” said Vezin ; “ but you know 


ANCIENT SORCERIES 


8 ; 


it was all so fantastical and charming that my im- 
agination was profoundly impressed. Perhaps, too,” 
he continued, gently explanatory, “ it was this stirring 
of my imagination that caused other impressions; 
for, as I walked back, the spell of the place began to 
steal over me in a dozen ways, though all intelligible 
ways. But there were other things I could not 
account for in the least, even then.” 

“ Incidents, you mean ? ” 

“ Hardly incidents, I think. A lot of vivid sensa- 
tions crowded themselves upon my mind and I could 
trace them to no causes. It was just after sunset 
and the tumbled old buildings traced magical out- 
lines against an opalescent sky of gold and red. 
The dusk was running down the twisted streets. All 
round the hill the plain pressed in like a dim sea, 
its level rising with the darkness. The spell of this 
kind of scene, you know,, can be very moving, and 
it was so that night. Yet I felt that what came to 
me had nothing directly to do with the mystery and 
wonder of the scene.” 

“Not merely the subtle transformations of the ' 
spirit that come with beauty,” put in the doctor, 
noticing his hesitation. 

“Exactly,” Vezin went on, duly encouraged and 
no longer so fearful of our smiles at his expense. 
“The impressions came from somewhere else. For 
instance, down the busy main street where men and 
women were bustling home from work, shopping at 
stalls and barrows, idly gossiping in groups, and all 
the rest of it, I saw that I aroused no interest and 
that no one turned to stare at me as a foreigner and 
stranger. I was utterly ignored, and my presence 
among them excited no special interest or attention. 


88 


JOHN SILENCE 


“And then, quite suddenly, it dawned upon me 
with conviction that all the time this indifference 
and inattention were merely feigned. Everybody 
as a matter of fact was watching me closely. Every 
movement I made was known and observed. Ignor- 
ing me was all a pretence — an elaborate pretence” 

He paused a moment and looked at us to see if 
we were smiling, and then continued, reassured — 

“ It is useless to ask me how I noticed this, because 
I simply cannot explain it. But the discovery gave 
me something of a shock. Before I got back to the 
inn, however, another curious thing rose up strongly 
in my mind and forced my recognition of it as true. 
And this, too, I may as well say at once, was equally 
inexplicable to me. I mean I can only give you 
the fact, as fact it was to me.” 

The little man left his chair and stood on the mat 
before the fire. His diffidence lessened from now 
onwards, as he lost himself again in the magic of the 
old adventure. His eyes shone a little already as he 
talked. 

“ Well,” he went on, his soft voice rising somewhat 
with his excitement, “ I was in a shop when it came 
to me first — though the idea must have been at work 
for a long time subconsciously to appear in so com- 
plete a form all at once. I was buying socks, I 
think,” he laughed, “ and struggling with my dreadful 
French, when it struck me that the woman in the 
shop did not care two pins whether I bought any- 
thing or not. She was indifferent whether she made 
a sale or did not make a sale. She was only pre- 
tending to sell. 

“ This sounds a very small and fanciful incident to 
build upon what follows. But really it was not small. 


ANCIENT SORCERIES 89 

I mean it was the spark that lit the line of powder 
and ran along to the big blaze in my mind. 

“ For the whole town, I suddenly realised, was 
something other than I so far saw it. The real 
activities and interests of the people were elsewhere 
and otherwise than appeared. Their true lives lay 
somewhere out of sight behind the scenes. Their 
busy-ness was but the outward semblance that masked 
their actual purposes. They bought and sold, and ate 
and drank, and walked about the streets, yet all the 
while the main stream of their existence lay some- 
where beyond my ken, underground, in secret places. 
In the shops and at the stalls they did not care 
whether I purchased their articles or not ; at the inn, 
they were indifferent to my staying or going; their 
life lay remote from my own, springing from hidden, 
mysterious sources, coursing out of sight, unknown. 
It was all a great elaborate pretence, assumed possibly 
for my benefit, or possibly for purposes of their own. 
But the main current of their energies ran elsewhere. 
I almost felt as an unwelcome foreign substance 
might be expected to feel when it has found its way 
into the human system and the whole body organises 
itself to eject it or to absorb it. The town was doing 
this very thing to me. 

“ This bizarre notion presented itself forcibly to my 
mind as I walked home to the inn, and I began 
busily to wonder wherein the true life of this town 
could lie and what were the actual interests and 
activities of its hidden life. 

“ And, now that my eyes were partly opened, I 
noticed other things too that puzzled me, first of 
which, I think, was the extraordinary silence of the 
whole place. Positively, the town was muffled. 


90 


JOHN SILENCE 


Although the streets were paved with cobbles the 
people moved about silently, softly, with padded feet, 
like cats. Nothing made noise. All was hushed, 
subdued, muted. The very voices were quiet, low- 
pitched like purring. Nothing clamorous, vehement 
or emphatic seemed able to live in the drowsy atmo- 
sphere of soft dreaming that soothed this little hill- 
town into its sleep. It was like the woman at the 
inn — an outward repose screening intense inner 
activity and purpose. 

“ Yet there was no sign of lethargy or sluggishness 
anywhere about it. The people were active and alert. 
Only a magical and uncanny softness lay over them 
all like a spell.” 

Vezin passed his hand across his eyes for a 
moment as though the memory had become very 
vivid. His voice had run off into a whisper so that 
we heard the last part with difficulty. He was telling 
a true thing obviously, yet something that he both 
liked and hated telling. 

“ I went back to the inn,” he continued presently 
in a louder voice, “ and dined. I felt a new strange 
world about me. My old world of reality receded. 
Here, whether I liked it or no, was something new and 
incomprehensible. I regretted having left the train 
so impulsively. An adventure was upon me, and I 
loathed adventures as foreign to my nature. More- 
over, this was the beginning apparently of an 
adventure somewhere deep within me, in a region I 
could not check or measure, and a feeling of alarm 
mingled itself with my wonder — alarm for the 
stability of what I had for forty years recognised as 
my ‘ personality,’ 

“ I went upstairs to bed, my mind teeming with 


ANCIENT SORCERIES 


9 * 


thoughts that were unusual to me, and of rather 
a haunting description. By way of relief I kept 
thinking of that nice, prosaic noisy train and all those 
wholesome, blustering passengers. I almost wished I 
were with them again. But my dreams took me else- 
where. I dreamed of cats, and soft-moving creatures, 
and the silence of life in a dim muffled world beyond 
the senses.” 

II 

Vezin stayed on from day to day, indefinitely, 
much longer than he had intended. He felt in a kind 
of dazed, somnolent condition. He did nothing in 
particular, but the place fascinated him and he could 
not decide to leave. Decisions were always very 
difficult for him and he sometimes wondered how he 
had ever brought himself to the point of leaving the 
train. It seemed as though some one else must have 
arranged it for him, and once or twice his thoughts 
ran to the swarthy Frenchman who had sat opposite. 
If only he could have understood that long sentence 
ending so strangely with “ d cause du sommeil et a 
cause des chats? He wondered what it all meant. 

Meanwhile the hushed softness of the town held 
him prisoner and he sought in his muddling, gentle 
way to find out where the mystery lay, and what it 
was all about. But his limited French and his con- 
stitutional hatred of active investigation made it hard 
for him to buttonhole anybody and ask questions 
He was content to observe, and watch, and remain 
negative. 

The weather held on calm and hazy, and this just 
suited him. He wandered about the town till he 
knew every street and alley. The people suffered 


92 


JOHN SILENCE 


him to come and go without let or hindrance, though 
it became clearer to him every day that he was never 
free himself from observation. The town watched 
him as a cat watches a mouse. And he got no nearer 
to finding out what they were all so busy with or 
where the main stream of their activities lay. This 
remained hidden. The people were as soft and 
mysterious as cats. 

But that he was continually under observation 
became more evident from day to day. 

For instance, when he strolled to the end of the 
town and entered a little green public garden beneath 
the ramparts and seated himself upon one of the 
empty benches in the sun, he was quite alone — at first. 
Not another seat was occupied; the little park was 
empty, the paths deserted. Yet, within ten minutes 
of his coming, there must have been fully twenty 
persons scattered about him, some strolling aimlessly 
along the gravel walks, staring at the flowers, and 
others seated on the wooden benches enjoying the 
sun like himself. None of them appeared to take 
any notice of him ; yet he understood quite well they 
had all come there to watch. They kept him under 
close observation. In the street they had seemed 
busy enough, hurrying upon various errands ; yet 
these were suddenly all forgotten and they had 
nothing to do but loll and laze in the sun, their duties 
unremembered. Five minutes after he left, the 
garden was again deserted, the seats vacant. But 
in the crowded street it was the same thing again ; 
he was never alone. He was ever in their thoughts. 

By degrees, too, he began to see how it was he 
was so cleverly watched, yet without the appear- 
ance of it. The people did nothing directly. They 


ANCIENT SORCERIES 


93 


behaved obliquely. He laughed in his mind as the 
thought thus clothed itself in words, but the phrase 
exactly described it. They looked at him from 
angles which naturally should have led their sight in 
another direction altogether. Their movements were 
oblique, too, so far as these concerned himself. The 
straight, direct thing was not their way evidently. 
They did nothing obviously. If he entered a shop 
to buy, the woman walked instantly away and busied 
herself with something at the farther end of the 
counter, though answering at once when he spoke, 
showing that she knew he was there and that this 
was only her way of attending to him. It was the 
fashion of the cat she followed. Even in the dining- 
room of the inn, the be-whiskered and courteous 
waiter, lithe and silent in all his movements, never 
seemed able to come straight to his table for an 
order or a dish. He came by zigzags, indirectly, 
vaguely, so that he appeared to be going to another 
table altogether, and only turned suddenly at the 
last moment, and was there beside him. 

Vezin smiled curiously to himself as he described 
how he began to realise these things. Other tourists 
there were none in the hostel, but he recalled the 
figures of one or two old men, inhabitants, who took 
their dejeuner and dinner there, and remembered how 
fantastically they entered the room in similar fashion. 
First, they paused in the doorway, peering about the 
room, and then, after a temporary inspection, they 
came in, as it were, sideways, keeping close to the 
walls so that he wondered which table they were 
making for, and at the last minute making almost a 
little quick run to their particular seats. And again 
he thought of the ways and methods of cats. 


94 


JOHN SILENCE 


Other small incidents, too, impressed him as all 
part of this queer, soft town with its muffled, indirect 
life, for the way some of the people appeared and 
disappeared with extraordinary swiftness puzzled 
him exceedingly. It may have been all perfectly 
natural, he knew, yet he could not make it out how 
the alleys swallowed them up and shot them forth in 
a second of time when there were no visible doorways 
or openings near enough to explain the phenomenon. 
Once he followed two elderly women who, he felt, 
had been particularly examining him from across the 
street — quite near the inn this was — and saw them 
turn the corner a few feet only in front of him. Yet 
when he sharply followed on their heels he saw 
nothing but an utterly deserted alley stretching in 
front of him with no sign of a living thing. And 
the only opening through which they could have 
escaped was a porch some fifty yards away, which 
not the swiftest human runner could have reached 
in time. 

And in just such sudden fashion people appeared 
when he never expected them. Once when he heard a 
great noise of fighting going on behind a low wall, 
and hurried up to see what was going on, what should 
he see but a group of girls and women engaged in 
vociferous conversation which instantly hushed itself 
to the normal whispering note of the town when his 
head appeared over the wall. And even then none 
of them turned to look at him directly, but slunk off 
with the most unaccountable rapidity into doors and 
sheds across the yard. And their voices, he thought, 
had sounded so like, so strangely like, the angry 
snarling of fighting animals, almost of cats. 

The whole spirit of the town, however, continued 


ANCIENT SORCERIES 


95 


to evade him as something elusive, protean, screened 
from the outer world, and at the same time intensely, 
genuinely: vital; and, since he now formed part of 
its life, this concealment puzzled and irritated him ; 
more — it began rather to frighten him. 

Out of the mists that slowly gathered about his 
ordinary surface thoughts, there rose again the idea 
that the inhabitants were waiting for him to declare 
himself, to take an attitude, to do this, or to do that ; 
and that when he had done so they in their turn 
would at length make some direct response, accepting 
or rejecting him. Yet the vital matter concerning 
which his decision was awaited came no nearer to 
him. 

Once or twice he purposely followed little pro- 
cessions or groups of the citizens in order to find out, 
if possible, on what purpose they were bent ; but they 
always discovered him in time and dwindled away, 
each individual going his or her own way. It was 
always the same : he never could learn what their 
main interest was. The cathedral was ever empty, 
the old church of St. Martin, at the other end of the 
town, deserted. They shopped because they had to, 
and not because they wished to. The booths stood 
neglected, the stalls unvisited, the little cafes desolate. 
Yet the streets were always full, the townsfolk ever 
on the bustle. 

“Can it be,” he thought to himself, yet with a 
deprecating laugh that he should have dared to think 
anything so odd, “can it be that these people are 
people of the twilight, that they live only at night 
their real life, and come out honestly only with the 
dusk? That during the day they make a sham 
though brave pretence, and after the sun is down 


96 


JOHN SILENCE 


their true life begins ? Have they the souls of night- 
things, and is the whole blessed town in the hands 
of the cats ? ” 

The fancy somehow electrified him with little 
shocks of shrinking and dismay. Yet, though he 
affected to laugh, he knew that he was beginning to 
feel more than uneasy, and that strange forces were 
tugging with a thousand invisible cords at the very 
centre of his being. Something utterly remote from 
his ordinary life, something that had not waked for 
years, began faintly to stir in his soul, sending feelers 
abroad into his brain and heart, shaping queer 
thoughts and penetrating even into certain of his 
minor actions. Something exceedingly vital to him- 
self, to his soul, hung in the balance. 

And, always when he returned to the inn about 
the hour of sunset, he saw the figures of the townsfolk 
stealing through the dusk from their shop doors, 
moving sentry-wise to and fro at the corners of the 
streets, yet always vanishing silently like shadows at 
his near approach. And as the inn invariably closed 
its doors at ten o’clock he had never yet found the 
opportunity he rather half-heartedly sought to see 
for himself what account the town could give of 
itself at night. 

“ h cause du sommeil et h cause des chats ” 

— the words now rang in his ears more and more 
often, though still as yet without any definite 
meaning. 

Moreover, something made him sleep like the 
dead. 


ANCIENT SORCERIES 


97 


III 

It was, I think, on the fifth day — though in this 
detail his story sometimes varied — that he made a 
definite discovery which increased his alarm and 
brought him up to a rather sharp climax. Before 
that he had already noticed that a change was going 
forward and certain subtle transformations being 
brought about in his character which modified 
several of his minor habits. And he had affected 
to ignore them. Here, however, was something he 
could no longer ignore ; and it startled him. 

At the best of times he was never very positive, 
always negative rather, compliant and acquiescent; 
yet, when necessity arose he was capable of reason- 
ably vigorous action and could take a strongish de- 
cision. The discovery he now made that brought him 
up with such a sharp turn was that this power had 
positively dwindled to nothing. He found it im- 
possible to make up his mind. For, on this fifth day, 
he realised that he had stayed long enough in the 
town and that for reasons he could only vaguely 
define to himself it was wiser and safer that he should 
leave. 

And he found that he could not leave ! 

This is difficult to describe in words, and it was 
more by gesture and the expression of his face that 
he conveyed to Dr. Silence the state of impotence he 
had reached. All this spying and watching, he said, 
had as it were spun a net about his feet so that he 
was trapped and powerless to escape ; he felt like a 
fly that had blundered into the intricacies of a great 
web ; he was caught, imprisoned, and could not get 
away. It was a distressing sensation. A numbness 
7 


98 


JOHN SILENCE 


had crept over his will till it had become almost 
incapable of decision. The mere thought of vigorous 
action — action towards escape — began to terrify him. 
All the currents of his life had turned inwards upon 
himself, striving to bring to the surface something 
that lay buried almost beyond reach, determined to 
force his recognition of something he had long 
forgotten — forgotten years upon years, centuries 
almost ago. It seemed as though a window deep 
within his being would presently open and reveal an 
entirely new world, yet somehow a world that was 
not unfamiliar. Beyond that, again, he fancied a 
great curtain hung ; and when that too rolled up he 
would see still farther into this region and at last 
understand something of the secret life of these extra- 
ordinary people. 

“Is this why they wait and watch?” he asked 
himself with rather a shaking heart, “for the time 
when I shall join them — or refuse to join them? 
Does the decision rest with me after all, and not with 
them ? ” 

And it was at this point that the sinister character 
of the adventure first really declared itself, and he 
became genuinely alarmed. The stability of his 
rather fluid little personality was at stake, he felt, and 
something in his heart turned coward. 

Why otherwise should he have suddenly taken to 
walking stealthily, silently, making as little sound as 
possible, for ever looking behind him? Why else 
should he have moved almost on tiptoe about the 
passages of the practically deserted inn, and when he 
was abroad have found himself deliberately taking 
advantage of what cover presented itself? And 
why, if he was not afraid, should the wisdom of 


ANCIENT SORCERIES 


99 


staying indoors after sundown have suddenly occurred 
to him as eminently desirable ? Why, indeed ? 

And, when John Silence gently pressed him for an 
explanation of these things, he admitted apologetic- 
ally that he had none to give. 

“It was simply that I feared something might 
happen to me unless I kept a sharp look-out. I felt 
afraid. It was instinctive,” was all he could say. “ I 
got the impression that the whole town was after me 
— wanted me for something ; and that if it got me I 
should lose myself, or at least the Self I knew, in 
some unfamiliar state of consciousness. But I am 
not a psychologist, you know,” he added meekly, 
“ and I cannot define it better than that.” 

It was while lounging in the courtyard half an 
hour before the evening meal that Vezin made this 
discovery, and he at once went upstairs to his quiet 
room at the end of the winding passage to think it 
over alone. In the yard it was empty enough, true, 
but there was always the possibility that the big 
woman whom he dreaded would come out of some 
door, with her pretence of knitting, to sit and watch 
him. This had happened several times, and he could 
not endure the sight of her. He still remembered 
his original fancy, bizarre though it was, that she 
would spring upon him the moment his back was 
turned and land with one single crushing leap upon 
his neck. Of course it was nonsense, but then it 
haunted him, and once an idea begins to do that 
it ceases to be nonsense. It has clothed itself in 
reality. 

He went upstairs accordingly. It was dusk, and 
the oil lamps had not yet been lit in the passages. 
He stumbled over the uneven surface of the ancient 


100 


JOHN SILENCE 


flooring, passing the dim outlines of doors along the 
corridor — doors that he had never once seen opened 
— rooms that seemed never occupied. He moved, 
as his habit now was, stealthily and on tiptoe. 

Half-way down the last passage to his own 
chamber there was a sharp turn, and it was just here, 
while groping round the walls with outstretched 
hands, that his fingers touched something that was 
not wall — something that moved. It was soft and 
warm in texture, indescribably fragrant, and about 
the height of his shoulder; and he immediately 
thought of a furry, sweet-smelling kitten. The next 
minute he knew it was something quite different. 

Instead of investigating, however, — his nerves must 
have been too overwrought for that, he said, — he 
shrank back as closely as possible against the wall 
on the other side. The thing, whatever it was, 
slipped past him with a sound of rustling, and retreat- 
ing with light footsteps down the passage behind him, 
was gone. A breath of warm, scented air was wafted 
to his nostrils. 

Vezin caught his breath for an instant and paused, 
stockstill, half leaning against the wall — and then 
almost ran down the remaining distance and entered 
his room with a rush, locking the door hurriedly behind 
him. Yet it was not fear that made him run : it 
was excitement, pleasurable excitement. His nerves 
were tingling, and a delicious glow made itself felt 
all over his body. In a flash it came to him that this 
was just what he had felt twenty-five years ago as a 
boy when he was in love for the first time. Warm 
currents of life ran all over him and mounted to his 
brain in a whirl of soft delight. His mood was 
suddenly become tender, melting, loving. 


ANCIENT SORCERIES 


101 


The room was quite dark, and he collapsed upon 
the sofa by the window, wondering what had 
happened to him and what it all meant. But the 
only thing he understood clearly in that instant 
was that something in him had swiftly, magically 
changed: he no longer wished to leave, or to 
argue with himself about leaving. The encounter in 
the passage-way had changed all that. The strange 
perfume of it still hung about him, bemusing his 
heart and mind. For he knew that it was a girl who 
had passed him, a girl's face that his fingers had 
brushed in the darkness, and he felt in some extra- 
ordinary way as though he had been actually kissed 
by her, kissed full upon the lips. 

Trembling, he sat upon the sofa by the window 
and struggled to collect his thoughts. He was 
utterly unable to understand how the mere passing 
of a girl in the darkness of a narrow passage-way 
could communicate so electric a thrill to his whole 
being that he still shook with the sweetness of it. 
Yet, there it was ! And he found it as useless to 
deny as to attempt analysis. Some ancient fire had 
entered his veins, and now ran coursing through his 
blood ; and that he was forty-five instead of twenty 
did not matter one little jot. Out of all the inner 
turmoil and confusion emerged the one salient fact 
that the mere atmosphere, the merest casual touch, of 
this girl, unseen, unknown in the darkness, had been 
sufficient to stir dormant fires in the centre of his 
heart, and rouse his whole being from a state of feeble 
sluggishness to one of tearing and tumultuous excite- 
ment. 

After a time, however, the number of Vezin’s years 
began to assert their cumulative power; he grew 


102 


JOHN SILENCE 


calmer ; and when a knock came at length upon his 
door and he heard the waiter’s voice suggesting that 
dinner was nearly over, he pulled himself together and 
slowly made his way downstairs into the dining-room. 

Every one looked up as he entered, for he was very 
late, but he took his customary seat in the far corner 
and began to eat. The trepidation was still in his 
nerves, but the fact that he had passed through 
the courtyard and hall without catching sight of a 
petticoat served to calm him a little. He ate so fast 
that he had almost caught up with the current stage 
of the table d’hdte, when a slight commotion in the 
room drew his attention. 

His chair was so placed that the door and the 
greater portion of the long salle d manger were 
behind him, yet it was not necessary to turn round to 
know that the same person he had passed in the dark 
passage had now come into the room. He felt the 
presence long before he heard or saw any one. Then 
he became aware that the old men, the only other 
guests, were rising one by one in their places, and 
exchanging greetings with some one who passed 
among them from table to table. And when at length 
he turned with his heart beating furiously to ascertain 
for himself, he saw the form of a young girl, lithe and 
slim, moving down the centre of the room and making 
straight for his own table in the corner. She moved 
wonderfully, with sinuous grace, like a young panther, 
and her approach filled him with such delicious be- 
wilderment that he was utterly unable to tell at first 
what her face was like, or discover what it was about 
the whole presentment of the creature that filled him 
anew with trepidation and delight. 

“ Ah, Ma’mselle est de retour ! ” he heard the old 


ANCIENT SORCERIES 


103 


waiter murmur at his side, and he was just able to 
take in that she was the daughter of the proprietress, 
when she was upon him, and he heard her voice. 
She was addressing him. Something of red lips he saw 
and laughing white teeth, and stray wisps of fine dark 
hair about the temples ; but all the rest was a dream in 
which his own emotion rose like a thick cloud before 
his eyes and prevented his seeing accurately, or 
knowing exactly what he did. He was aware that 
she greeted him with a charming little bow ; that her 
beautiful large eyes looked searchingly into his own ; 
that the perfume he had noticed in the dark passage 
again assailed his nostrils, and that she was bending 
a little towards him and leaning with one hand on the 
table at his side. She was quite close to him — that 
was the chief thing he knew — explaining that she had 
been asking after the comfort of her mother’s guests, 
and was now introducing herself to the latest arrival 
— himself. 

“ M’sieur has already been here a few days,” he 
heard the waiter say ; and then her own voice, sweet 
as singing, replied — 

“Ah, but M’sieur is not going to leave us just yet, 
I hope. My mother is too old to look after the 
comfort of our guests properly, but now I am here 
I will remedy all that.” She laughed deliciously. 
“ M’sieur shall be well looked after.” 

Vezin, struggling with his emotion and desire to 
be polite, half rose to acknowledge the pretty speech, 
and to stammer some sort of reply, but as he did so 
his hand by chance touched her own that was resting 
upon the table, and a shock that was for all the world 
like a shock of electricity, passed from her skin into his 
body. His soul wavered and shook deep within him 


104 


JOHN SILENCE 


He caught her eyes fixed upon his own with a look 
of most curious intentness, and the next moment he 
knew that he had sat down wordless again on his 
chair, that the girl was already half-way across the 
room, and that he was trying to eat his salad with a 
dessert-spoon and a knife. 

Longing for her return, and yet dreading it, he gulped 
down the remainder of his dinner, and then went at 
once to his bedroom to be alone with his thoughts. 
This time the passages were lighted, and he suffered 
no exciting contretemps ; yet the winding corridor 
was dim with shadows, and the last portion, from the 
bend of the walls onwards, seemed longer than he 
had ever known it. It ran downhill like the pathway 
on a mountain side, and as he tiptoed softly down it 
he felt that by rights it ought to have led him clean 
out of the house into the heart of a great forest. The 
world was singing with him. Strange fancies filled 
his brain, and once in the room, with the door securely 
locked, he did not light the candles, but sat by the 
open window thinking long, long thoughts that came 
unbidden in troops to his mind. 

IV 

This part of the story he told to Dr. Silence, without 
special coaxing, it is true, yet with much stammering 
embarrassment. He could not in the least under- 
stand, he said, how the girl had managed to affect 
him so profoundly, and even before he had set eyes 
upon her. For her mere proximity in the darkness had 
been sufficient to set him on fire. He knew nothing 
of enchantments, and for years had been a stranger 
to anything approaching tender relations with any 


ANCIENT SORCERIES 


105 


member of the opposite sex, for he was encased in 
shyness, and realised his overwhelming defects only 
too well. Yet this bewitching young creature came 
to him deliberately. Her manner was unmistakable, 
and she sought him out on every possible occasion. 
Chaste and sweet she was undoubtedly, yet frankly 
inviting; and she won him utterly with the first 
glance of her shining eyes, even if she had not 
already done so in the dark merely by the magic 
of her invisible presence. 

“ You felt she was altogether wholesome and 
good?” queried the doctor. “You had no reaction 
of any sort — for instance, of alarm ? ” 

Vezin looked up sharply with one of his inimitable 
little apologetic smiles. It was some time before he 
replied. The mere memory of the adventure had 
suffused his shy face with blushes, and his brown 
eyes sought the floor again before he answered. 

“ I don’t think I can quite say that,” he explained 
presently. “ I acknowledged certain qualms, sitting 
up in my room afterwards. A conviction grew upon 
me that there was something about her — how shall 
I express it? — well, something unholy. It is not 
impurity in any sense, physical or mental, that I 
mean, but something quite indefinable that gave me 
a vague sensation of the creeps. She drew me, and 
at the same time repelled me, more than — than ” 

He hesitated, blushing furiously, and unable to 
finish the sentence. 

“Nothing like it has ever come to me before or 
since,” he concluded, with lame confusion. “ I 
suppose it was, as you suggested just now, some- 
thing of an enchantment. At any rate, it was strong 
enough to make me feel that I would stay in that 


io 6 


JOHN SILENCE 


awful little haunted town for years if only I could see 
her every day, hear her voice, watch her wonderful 
movements, and sometimes, perhaps, touch her hand.” 

“Can you explain to me what you felt was the 
source of her power?” John Silence asked, looking 
purposely anywhere but at the narrator. 

“ I am surprised that you should ask me such a 
question,” answered Vezin, with the nearest approach 
to dignity he could manage. “ I think no man can 
describe to another convincingly wherein lies the 
magic of the woman who ensnares him. I certainly 
cannot. I can only say this slip of a girl bewitched 
me, and the mere knowledge that she was living and 
sleeping in the same house filled me with an extra- 
ordinary sense of delight. 

“But there’s one thing I can tell you,” he went 
on earnestly, his eyes aglow, “namely, that she 
seemed to sum up and synthesise in herself all the 
strange hidden forces that operated so mysteri- 
ously in the town and its inhabitants. She had the 
silken movements of the panther, going smoothly, 
silently to and fro, and the same indirect, oblique 
methods as the townsfolk, screening, like them, 
secret purposes of her own — purposes that I was 
sure had me for their objective. She kept me, to 
my terror and delight, ceaselessly under observation, 
yet so carelessly, so consummately, that another man 
less sensitive, if I may say so ” — he made a deprecating 
gesture — “ or less prepared by what had gone before, 
would never have noticed it at all. She was always 
still, always reposeful, yet she seemed to be every- 
where at once, so that I never could escape from her. 
I was continually meeting the stare and laughter of 
her great eyes, in the corners of the rooms, in the 


ANCIENT SORCERIES 


107 

passages, calmly looking at me through the windows, 
or in the busiest parts of the public streets.” 

Their intimacy, it seems, grew very rapidly after 
this first encounter which had so violently disturbed 
the little man’s equilibrium. He was naturally very 
prim, and prim folk live mostly in so small a world 
that anything violently unusual may shake them 
clean out of it, and they therefore instinctively 
distrust originality. But Vezin began to forget his 
primness after awhile. The girl was always modestly 
behaved, and as her mother’s representative she 
naturally had to do with the guests in the hotel. It 
was not out of the way that a spirit of camaraderie 
should spring up. Besides, she was young, she was 
charmingly pretty, she was French, and — she ob- 
viously liked him. 

At the same time, there was something indescrib- 
able — a certain indefinable atmosphere of other 
places, other times — that made him try hard to 
remain on his guard, and sometimes made him catch 
his breath with a sudden start. It was all rather like 
a delirious dream, half delight, half dread, he confided 
in a whisper to Dr. Silence ; and more than once he 
hardly knew quite what he was doing or saying, 
as though he were driven forward by impulses he 
scarcely recognised as his own. 

And though the thought of leaving presented itself 
again and again to his mind, it was each time with 
less insistence, so that he stayed on from day to day, 
becoming more and more a part of the sleepy life of 
this dreamy mediaeval town, losing more and more 
of his recognisable personality. Soon, he felt, the 
Curtain within would roll up with an awful rush, and 
he would find himself suddenly admitted into the 


io8 


JOHN SILENCE 


secret purposes of the hidden life that lay behind it 
all. Only, by that time, he would have become 
transformed into an entirely different being. 

And, meanwhile, he noticed various little signs of 
the intention to make his stay attractive to him : 
flowers in his bedroom, a more comfortable arm-chair 
in the corner, and even special little extra dishes on 
his private table in the dining-room. Conversations, 
too, with “ Mademoiselle Ilse ” became more and more 
frequent and pleasant, and although they seldom 
travelled beyond the weather, or the details of the 
town, the girl, he noticed, was never in a hurry to 
bring them to an end, and often contrived to interject 
little odd sentences that he never properly understood, 
yet felt to be significant. 

And it was these stray remarks, full of a meaning 
that evaded him, that pointed to some hidden purpose 
of her own and made him feel uneasy. They all had 
to do, he felt sure, with reasons for his staying on in 
the town indefinitely. 

“ And has M’sieur not even yet come to a 
decision ? ” she said softly in his ear, sitting beside 
him in the sunny yard before ddjeuner , the acquaint- 
ance having progressed with significant rapidity. 
“ Because, if it’s so difficult, we must all try together 
to help him ! ” 

The question startled him, following upon his own 
thoughts. It was spoken with a pretty laugh, and a 
stray bit of hair across one eye, as she turned and 
peered at him half roguishly. Possibly he did not 
quite understand the French of it, for her near 
presence always confused his small knowledge of the 
language distressingly. Yet the words, andher manner, 
and something else that lay behind it all in her mind, 


ANCIENT SORCERIES 


109 


frightened him. It gave such point to his feeling 
that the town was waiting for him to make his mind 
up on some important matter. 

At the same time, her voice, and the fact that she 
was there so close beside him in her soft dark dress, 
thrilled him inexpressibly. 

“ It is true I find it difficult to leave,” he stammered, 
losing his way deliciously in the depths of her eyes, 
“and especially now that Mademoiselle Ilse has 
come.” 

He was surprised at the success of his sentence, 
and quite delighted with the little gallantry of it. 
But at the same time he could have bitten his tongue 
off for having said it. 

“Then after all you like our little town, or you 
would not be pleased to stay on,” she said, ignoring 
the compliment. 

“ I am enchanted with it, and enchanted with you,” 
he cried, feeling that his tongue was somehow slipping 
beyond the control of his brain. And he was on the 
verge of saying all manner of other things of the 
wildest description, when the girl sprang lightly up 
from her chair beside him, and made to go. 

“ It is soupe h Portion to-day ! ” she cried, laughing 
back at him through the sunlight, “ and I must go 
and see about it. Otherwise, you know, M’sieur will 
not enjoy his dinner, and then, perhaps, he will 
leave us ! ” 

He watched her cross the courtyard, moving with 
all the grace and lightness of the feline race, and her 
simple black dress clothed her, he thought, exactly 
like the fur of the same supple species. She turned 
once to laugh at him from the porch with the glass 
door, and then stopped a moment to speak to her 


I 10 


JOHN SILENCE 


mother, who sat knitting as usual in her corner seat 
just inside the hall-way. 

But how was it, then, that the moment his eye fell 
upon this ungainly woman, the pair of them appeared 
suddenly as other than they were? Whence came 
that transforming dignity and sense of power that 
enveloped them both as by magic? What was it 
about that massive woman that made her appear 
instantly regal, and set her on a throne in some dark 
and dreadful scenery, wielding a sceptre over the red 
glare of some tempestuous orgy ? And why did this 
slender stripling of a girl, graceful as a willow, lithe 
as a young leopard, assume suddenly an air of sinister 
majesty, and move with flame and smoke about her 
head, and the darkness of night beneath her feet ? 

Vezin caught his breath and sat there transfixed. 
Then, almost simultaneously with its appearance, the 
queer notion vanished again, and the sunlight of day 
caught them both, and he heard her laughing to her 
mother about the soupe d Portion, and saw her glanc- 
ing back at him over her dear little shoulder with a 
smile that made him think of a dew-kissed rose 
bending lightly before summer airs. 

And, indeed, the onion soup was particularly 
excellent that day, because he saw another cover laid 
at his small table and, with fluttering heart, heard 
the waiter murmur by way of explanation that 
“Ma’mselle Ilse would honour M’sieur to-day at 
dPjeuner , as her custom sometimes is with her 
mother’s guests.” 

So actually she sat by him all through that delirious 
meal, talking quietly to him in easy French, seeing 
that he was well looked after, mixing the salad- 
dressing, and even helping him with her own hand. 


ANCIENT SORCERIES 


1 1 1 


And, later in the afternoon, while he was smoking in 
the courtyard, longing for a sight of her as soon as 
her duties were done, she came again to his side, and 
when he rose to meet her, she stood facing him a 
moment, full of a perplexing sweet shyness before 
she spoke — 

“ My mother thinks you ought to know more of 
the beauties of our little town, and I think so too ! 
Would M’sieur like me to be his guide, perhaps? I 
can show him everything, for our family has lived 
here for many generations.” 

She had him by the hand, indeed, before he could 
find a single word to express his pleasure, and led him, 
all unresisting, out into the street, yet in such a way 
that it seemed perfectly natural she should do so, 
and without the faintest suggestion of boldness or 
immodesty. Her face glowed with the pleasure and 
interest of it, and with her short dress and tumbled 
hair she looked every bit the charming child of 
seventeen that she was, innocent and playful, proud 
of her native town, and alive beyond her years to the 
sense of its ancient beauty. 

So they went over the town together, and she 
showed him what she considered its chief interest: 
the tumble-down old house where her forebears had 
lived ; the sombre, aristocratic-looking mansion where 
her mother’s family dwelt for centuries, and the 
ancient market-place where several hundred years 
before the witches had been burnt by the score. She 
kept up a lively running stream of talk about it all, 
of which he understood not a fiftieth part as he trudged 
along by her side, cursing his forty-five years and 
feeling all the yearnings of his early manhood revive 
and jeer at him. And, as she talked, England and 


I I 2 


JOHN SILENCE 


Surbiton seemed very far away indeed, almost in an- 
other age of the world’s history. Her voice touched 
something immeasurably old in him, something that 
slept deep. It lulled the surface parts of his con- 
sciousness to sleep, allowing what was far more ancient 
to awaken. Like the town, with its elaborate pretence 
of modern active life, the upper layers of his being 
became dulled, soothed, muffled, and what lay 
underneath began to stir in its sleep. That big 
Curtain swayed a little to and fro. Presently it might 
lift altogether. . . . 

He began to understand a little better at last. 
The mood of the town was reproducing itself in him. 
In proportion as his ordinary external self became 
muffled, that inner secret life, that was far more real 
and vital, asserted itself. And this girl was surely 
the high-priestess of it all, the chief instrument of its 
accomplishment. New thoughts, with new interpreta- 
tions, flooded his mind as she walked beside him 
through the winding streets, while the picturesque 
old gabled town, softly coloured in the sunset, had 
never appeared to him so wholly wonderful and 
seductive. 

And only one curious incident came to disturb and 
puzzle him, slight in itself, but utterly inexplicable, 
bringing white terror into the child’s face and a scream 
to her laughing lips. He had merely pointed to a 
column of blue smoke that rose from the burning 
autumn leaves and made a picture against the red 
roofs, and had then run to the wall and called her to 
his side to watch the flames shooting here and there 
through the heap of rubbish. Yet, at the sight of it, 
as though taken by surprise, her face had altered 
dreadfully, and she had turned and run like the wind, 


ANCIENT SORCERIES 


1 1 3 

calling out wild sentences to him as she ran, of which 
he had not understood a single word, except that the 
fire apparently frightened her, and she wanted to get 
quickly away from it, and to get him away too. 

Yet five minutes later she was as calm and happy 
again as though nothing had happened to alarm or 
waken troubled thoughts in her, and they had both 
forgotten the incident. 

They were leaning over the ruined ramparts together 
listening to the weird music of the band as he had 
heard it the first day of his arrival. It moved him 
again profoundly as it had done before, and some- 
how he managed to find his tongue and his best 
French. The girl leaned across the stones close 
beside him. No one was about. Driven by some 
remorseless engine within he began to stammer 
something — he hardly knew what — of his strange 
admiration for her. Almost at the first word she 
sprang lightly off the wall and came up smiling in 
front of him, just touching his knees as he sat there. 
She was hatless as usual, and the sun caught her hair 
and one side of her cheek and throat. 

“ Oh, I’m so glad ! ” she cried, clapping her little 
hands softly in his face, “ so very glad, because that 
means that if you like me you must also like what I 
do, and what I belong to.” 

Already he regretted bitterly having lost control 
of himself. Something in the phrasing of her sentence 
chilled him. He knew the fear of embarking upon 
an unknown and dangerous sea. 

“You will take part in our real life, I mean,” she 
added softly, with an indescribable coaxing of manner, 
as though she noticed his shrinking. “You will 
come back to us.” 

8 


JOHN SILENCE 


114 

Already this slip of a child seemed to dominate 
him ; he felt her power coming over him more and 
more ; something emanated from her that stole over 
his senses and made him aware that her personality, 
for all its simple grace, held forces that were stately, 
imposing, august. He saw her again moving through 
smoke and flame amid broken and tempestuous 
scenery, alarmingly strong, her terrible mother by 
her side. Dimly this shone through her smile and 
appearance of charming innocence. 

“You will, I know,” she repeated, holding him 
with her eyes. 

They were quite alone up there on the ramparts, 
and the sensation that she was overmastering him 
stirred a wild sensuousness in his blood. The 
mingled abandon and reserve in her attracted him 
furiously, and all of him that was man rose up and 
resisted the creeping influence, at the same time 
acclaiming it with the full delight of his forgotten 
youth. An irresistible desire came to him to question 
her, to summon what still remained to him of his 
own little personality in an effort to retain the right 
to his normal self. 

The girl had grown quiet again, and was now 
leaning on the broad wall close beside him, gazing 
out across the darkening plain, her elbows on the 
coping, motionless as a figure carved in stone. He 
took his courage in both hands. 

“Tell me, Ils6,” he said, unconsciously imitating 
her own purring softness of voice, yet aware that 
he was utterly in earnest, “ what is the meaning of 
this town, and what is this real life you speak of? 
And why is it that the people watch me from 
morning to night? Tell me what it all means? 


ANCIENT SORCERIES 


1 1 5 

And, tell me,” he added more quickly with passion 
in his voice, “ what you really are — yourself?” 

She turned her head and looked at him through 
half-closed eyelids, her growing inner excitement be- 
traying itself by the faint colour that ran like a shadow 
across her face. 

“ It seems to me,” — he faltered oddly under her 
gaze — “ that I have some right to know ” 

Suddenly she opened her eyes to the full. “You 
love me, then ? ” she asked softly. 

“ I swear,” he cried impetuously, moved as by the 
force of a rising tide, “ I never felt before — I have 
never known any other girl who ” 

“Then you have the right to know,” she calmly 
interrupted his confused confession ; “ for love shares 
all secrets.” 

She paused, and a thrill like fire ran swiftly 
through him. Her words lifted him off the earth, 
and he felt a radiant happiness, followed almost the 
same instant in horrible contrast by the thought of 
death. He became aware that she had turned her 
eyes upon his own and was speaking again. 

“ The real life I speak of,” she whispered, “ is 
the old, old life within, the life of long ago, the life 
to which you, too, once belonged, and to which you 
still belong.” 

A faint wave of memory troubled the deeps of his 
soul as her low voice sank into him. What she was 
saying he knew instinctively to be true, even though 
he could not as yet understand its full purport. 
His present life seemed slipping from him as he 
listened, merging his personality in one that was 
far older and greater. It was this loss of his present 
self that brought to him the thought of death. 


JOHN SILENCE 


1 1 6 

“ You came here,” she went on, “ with the purpose of 
seeking it, and the people felt your presence and are 
waiting to know what you decide, whether you will 
leave them without having found it, or whether ” 

Her eyes remained fixed upon his own, but her 
face began to change, growing larger and darker with 
an expression of age. 

“ It is their thoughts constantly playing about 
your soul that makes you feel they watch you. 
They do not watch you with their eyes. The pur- 
poses of their inner life are calling to you, seeking 
to claim you. You were all part of the same life long, 
long ago, and now they want you back again among 
them.” 

Vezin’s timid heart sank with dread as he listened ; 
but the girl's eyes held him with a net of joy so that 
he had no wish to escape. She fascinated him, as it 
were, clean out of his normal self. 

“ Alone, however, the people could never have 
caught and held you,” she resumed. “The motive 
force was not strong enough ; it has faded through 
all these years. But I ” — she paused a moment 
and looked at him with complete confidence in her 
splendid eyes — “ I possess the spell to conquer 
you and hold you : the spell of old love. I can win 
you back again and make you live the old life with 
me, for the force of the ancient tie between us, if I 
choose to use it, is irresistible. And I do choose to 
use it. I still want you. And you, dear soul of my 
dim past” — she pressed closer to him so that her 
breath passed across his eyes, and her voice positively 
sang — “ I mean to have you, for you love me and 
are utterly at my mercy.” 

Vezin heard, and yet did not hear; understood, 


ANCIENT SORCERIES 


ii 7 


yet did not understand. He had passed into a 
condition of exaltation. The world was beneath his 
feet, made of music and flowers, and he was flying 
somewhere far above it through the sunshine of pure 
delight. He was breathless and giddy with the wonder 
of her words. They intoxicated him. And, still, the 
terror of it all, the dreadful thought of death, pressed 
ever behind her sentences. For flames shot through 
her voice out of black smoke and licked at his soul. 

And they communicated with one another, it 
seemed to him, by a process of swift telepathy, for 
his French could never have compassed all he said 
to her. Yet she understood perfectly, and what she 
said to him was like the recital of verses long since 
known. And the mingled pain and sweetness of it 
as he listened were almost more than his little soul 
could hold. 

“Yet I came here wholly by chance ” he heard 

himself saying. 

“ No,” she cried with passion, “ you came here 
because I called to you. I have called to you for 
years, and you came with the whole force of the past 
behind you. You had to come, for I own you, and 
I claim you.” 

She rose again and moved closer, looking at him 
with a certain insolence in the face — the insolence of 
power. 

The sun had set behind the towers of the old 
cathedral and the darkness rose up from the plain 
and enveloped them. The music of the band had 
ceased. The leaves of the plane trees hung motion- 
less, but the chill of the autumn evening rose about 
them and made Vezin shiver. There was no sound 
but the sound of their voices and the occasional soft 


1 1 8 


JOHN SILENCE 


rustle of the girl’s dress. He could hear the blood 
rushing in his ears. He scarcely realised where he 
was or what he was doing. Some terrible magic of 
the imagination drew him deeply down into the 
tombs of his own being, telling him in no unfaltering 
voice that her words shadowed forth the truth. And 
this simple little French maid, speaking beside him 
with so strange authority, he saw curiously alter into 
quite another being. As he stared into her eyes, 
the picture in his mind grew and lived, dressing 
itself vividly to his inner vision with a degree of 
reality he was compelled to acknowledge. As once 
before, he saw her tall and stately, moving through 
wild and broken scenery of forests and mountain 
caverns, the glare of flames behind her head and 
clouds of shifting smoke about her feet. Dark leaves 
encircled her hair, flying loosely in the wind, and 
her limbs shone through the merest rags of clothing. 
Others were about her too, and ardent eyes on all 
sides cast delirious glances upon her, but her own 
eyes were always for One only, one whom she held 
by the hand. For she was leading the dance in 
some tempestuous orgy to the music of chanting 
voices, and the dance she led circled about a 
great and awful Figure on a throne, brooding over 
the scene through lurid vapours, while innumerable 
other wild faces and forms crowded furiously about 
her in the dance. But the one she held by the hand 
he knew to be himself, and the monstrous shape 
upon the throne he knew to be her mother. 

The vision rose within him, rushing to him down 
the long years of buried time, crying aloud to him 
with the voice of memory reawakened. . And 
then the scene faded away and he saw the clear 


ANCIENT SORCERIES 


119 

circle of the girl’s eyes gazing steadfastly into his 
own, and she became once more the pretty little 
daughter of the innkeeper, and he found his voice 
again. 

“ And you,” he whispered tremblingly — “ you child 
of visions and enchantment, how is it that you so 
bewitch me that I loved you even before I saw ? ” 

She drew herself up beside him with an air of rare 
dignity. 

“ The call of the Past,” she said ; “ and besides,” 
she added proudly, “ in the real life I am a 

princess ” 

“ A princess ! ” he cried. 

“ and my mother is a queen ! ” 

At this, little Vezin utterly lost his head. Delight 
tore at his heart and swept him into sheer ecstasy. 
To hear that sweet singing voice, and to see those 
adorable little lips utter such things, upset his balance 
beyond all hope of control. He took her in his arms 
and covered her unresisting face with kisses. 

But even while he did so, and while the hot passion 
swept him, he felt that she was soft and loathsome, 
and that her answering kisses stained his very 
soul. . . . And when, presently, she had freed herself 
and vanished into the darkness, he stood there, leaning 
against the wall in a state of collapse, creeping with 
horror from the touch of her yielding body, and 
inwardly raging at the weakness that he already 
dimly realised must prove his undoing. 

And from the shadows of the old buildings into 
which she disappeared there rose in the stillness of 
the night a singular, long-drawn cry, which at first 
he took for laughter, but which later he was sure he 
recognised as the almost human wailing of a cat. 


120 


JOHN SILENCE 


V 

For a long time Vezin leant there against the wall, 
alone with his surging thoughts and emotions. He 
understood at length that he had done the one thing 
necessary to call down upon him the whole force of 
this ancient Past. For in those passionate kisses he 
had acknowledged the tie of olden days, and had 
revived it. And the memory of that soft impalpable 
caress in the darkness of the inn corridor came 
back to him with a shudder. The girl had first 
mastered him, and then led him to the one act 
that was necessary for her purpose. He had been 
waylaid, after the lapse of centuries — caught, and 
conquered. 

Dimly he realised this, and sought to make plans 
for his escape. But, for the moment at any rate, he 
was powerless to manage his thoughts or will, for 
the sweet, fantastic madness of the whole adventure 
mounted to his brain like a spell, and he gloried in 
the feeling that he was utterly enchanted and moving 
in a world so much larger and wilder than the one 
he had ever been accustomed to. 

The moon, pale and enormous, was just rising over 
the sea-like plain, when at last he rose to go. Her 
slanting rays drew all the houses into new perspec- 
tive, so that their roofs, already glistening with dew, 
seemed to stretch much higher into the sky than 
usual, and their gables and quaint old towers lay far 
away in its purple reaches. 

The cathedral appeared unreal in a silver mist. He 
moved softly, keeping to the shadows ; but the streets 
were all deserted and very silent; the doors were 
closed, the shutters fastened. Not a soul was astir. 


ANCIENT SORCERIES 


I 21 


The hush of night lay over everything ; it was like 
a town of the dead, a churchyard with gigantic and 
grotesque tombstones. 

Wondering where all the busy life of the day had 
so utterly disappeared to, he made his way to a 
back door that entered the inn by means of the 
stables, thinking thus to reach his room unobserved. 
He reached the courtyard safely and crossed it 
by keeping close to the shadow of the wall. He 
sidled down it, mincing along on tiptoe, just as 
the old men did when they entered the salle a 
manger. He was horrified to find himself doing 
this instinctively. A strange impulse came to him, 
catching him somehow in the centre of his body — 
an impulse to drop upon all fours and run swiftly 
and silently. He glanced upwards and the idea 
came to him to leap up upon his window-sill over- 
head instead of going round by the stairs. This 
occurred to him as the easiest, and most natural 
way. It was like the beginning of some horrible 
transformation of himself into something else. He 
was fearfully strung up. 

The moon was higher now, and the shadows very 
dark along the side of the street where he moved. 
He kept among the deepest of them, and reached 
the porch with the glass doors. 

But here there was light ; the inmates, unfortunately, 
were still about. Hoping to slip across the hall 
unobserved and reach the stairs, he opened the door 
carefully and stole in. Then he saw that the hall 
was not empty. A large dark thing lay against the 
wall on his left. At first he thought it must be 
household articles. Then it moved, and he thought 
it was an immense cat, distorted in some way by 


122 


JOHN SILENCE 


the play of light and shadow. Then it rose straight 
up before him and he saw that it was the proprie- 
tress. 

What she had been doing in this position he 
could only venture a dreadful guess, but the 
moment she stood up and faced him he was 
aware of some terrible dignity clothing her about 
that instantly recalled the girl’s strange saying 
that she was a queen. Huge and sinister she 
stood there under the little oil lamp ; alone with 
him in the empty hall. Awe stirred in his heart, 
and the roots of some ancient fear. He felt that 
he must bow to her and make some kind of 
obeisance. The impulse was fierce and irresistible, 
as of long habit. He glanced quickly about him. 
There was no one there. Then he deliberately 
inclined his head towards her. He bowed. 

“ Enfin ! M’sieur s’est done decide. C’est bien 
alors. J’en suis contente.” 

Her words came to him sonorously as through 
a great open space. 

Then the great figure came suddenly across the 
flagged hall at him and seized his trembling hands. 
Some overpowering force moved with her and 
caught him. 

“ On pourrait faire un p’tit tour ensemble, n’est-ce 
pas? Nous y allons cette nuit et il faut s’exercer 
un peu d’avance pour cela. Ils 6 , Ils 6 , viens done 
ici. Viens vite ! ” 

And she whirled him round in the opening steps 
of some dance that seemed oddly and horribly 
familiar. They made no sound on the stones, this 
strangely assorted couple. It was all soft and 
stealthy. And presently, when the air seemed to 


ANCIENT SORCERIES 


123 


thicken like smoke, and a red glare as of flame shot 
through it, he was aware that some one else had 
joined them and that his hand the mother had 
released was now tightly held by the daughter. 
Us6 had come in answer to the call, and he saw 
her with leaves of vervain twined in her dark hair, 
clothed in tattered vestiges of some curious gar- 
ment, beautiful as the night, and horribly, odiously, 
loathsomely seductive. 

“To the Sabbath! to the Sabbath!” they cried. 
“ On to the Witches’ Sabbath ! ” 

Up and down that narrow hall they danced, the 
women on each side of him, to the wildest measure he 
had ever imagined, yet which he dimly, dreadfully 
remembered, till the lamp on the wall flickered and 
went out, and they were left in total darkness. And 
the devil woke in his heart with a thousand vile 
suggestions and made him afraid. 

Suddenly they released his hands and he heard the 
voice of the mother cry that it was time, and they 
must go. Which way they went he did not pause to 
see. He only realised that he was free, and he 
blundered through the darkness till he found the 
stairs and then tore up them to his room as though 
all hell was at his heels. 

He flung himself on the sofa, with his face in his 
hands, and groaned. Swiftly reviewing a dozen 
ways of immediate escape, all equally impossible, 
he finally decided that the only thing to do for the 
moment was to sit quiet and wait. He must see 
what was going to happen. At least in the privacy 
of his own bedroom he would be fairly safe. The 
door was locked. He crossed over and softly opened 
the window which gave upon the courtyard and also 


1 24 JOHN SILENCE 

permitted a partial view of the hall through the glass 
doors. 

As he did so the hum and murmur of a great 
activity reached his ears from the streets beyond — 
the sound of footsteps and voices muffled by distance. 
He leaned out cautiously and listened. The moon- 
light was clear and strong now, but his own window 
was in shadow, the silver disc being still behind the 
house. It came to him irresistibly that the inhabit- 
ants of the town, who a little while before had all 
been invisible behind closed doors, were now issuing 
forth, busy upon some secret and unholy errand. He 
listened intently. 

At first everything about him was silent, but soon 
he became aware of movements going on in the house 
itself. Rustlings and cheepings came to him across 
that still, moonlit yard. A concourse of living beings 
sent the hum of their activity into the night. Things 
were on the move everywhere. A biting, pungent 
odour rose through the air, coming he knew not 
whence. Presently his eyes became glued to the 
windows of the opposite wall where the moonshine 
fell in a soft blaze. The roof overhead, and behind 
him, was reflected clearly in the panes of glass, and 
he saw the outlines of dark bodies moving with long 
footsteps over the tiles and along the coping. They 
passed swiftly and silently, shaped like immense cats, 
in an endless procession across the pictured glass, 
and then appeared to leap down to a lower level 
where he lost sight of them. He just caught the soft 
thudding of their leaps. Sometimes their shadows 
fell upon the white wall opposite, and then he could 
not make out whether they were the shadows of 
human beings or of cats. They seemed to change 


ANCIENT SORCERIES 


125 


swiftly from one to the other. The transformation 
looked horribly real, for they leaped like human 
beings, yet changed swiftly in the air immediately 
afterwards, and dropped like animals. 

The yard, too, beneath him, was now alive with the 
creeping movements of dark forms all stealthily 
drawing towards the porch with the glass doors. 
They kept so closely to the wall that he could not 
determine their actual shape, but when he saw that 
they passed on to the great congregation that was 
gathering in the hall, he understood that these were 
the creatures whose leaping shadows he had first 
seen reflected in the window-panes opposite. They 
were coming from all parts of the town, reaching the 
appointed meeting-place across the roofs and tiles, 
and springing from level to level till they came to 
the yard. 

Then a new sound caught his ear, and he saw that 
the windows all about him were being softly opened, 
and that to each window came a face. A moment 
later figures began dropping hurriedly down into the 
yard. And these figures, as they lowered themselves 
down from the windows, were human, he saw; but 
once safely in the yard they fell upon all fours and 
changed in the swiftest possible second into — cats — 
huge, silent cats. They ran in streams to join the 
main body in the hall beyond. 

So, after all, the rooms in the house had not been 
empty and unoccupied. 

Moreover, what he saw no longer filled him with 
amazement. For he remembered it all. It was 
familiar. It had all happened before just so, 
hundreds of times, and he himself had taken part in 
it and known the wild madness of it all. The outline 


126 


JOHN SILENCE 


of the old building changed, the yard grew larger, 
and he seemed to be staring down upon it from a 
much greater height through smoky vapours. And, 
as he looked, half remembering, the old pains of long 
ago, fierce and sweet, furiously assailed him, and the 
blood stirred horribly as he heard the Call of the 
Dance again in his heart and tasted the ancient 
magic of Ilse whirling by his side. 

Suddenly he started back. A great lithe cat had 
leaped softly up from the shadows below on to the 
sill close to his face, and was staring fixedly at him 
with the eyes of a human. “Come,” it seemed to 
say, “ come with us to the Dance ! Change as of 
old ! Transform yourself swiftly and come !” Only 
too well he understood the creature’s soundless 
call. 

It was gone again in a flash with scarcely a 
sound of its padded feet on the stones, and then 
others dropped by the score down the side of 
the house, past his very eyes, all changing as they 
fell and darting away rapidly, softly, towards the 
gathering point. And again he felt the dreadful 
desire to do likewise ; to murmur the old incantation, 
and then drop upon hands and knees and run swiftly 
for the great flying leap into the air. Oh, how the 
passion of it rose within him like a flood, twisting his 
very entrails, sending his heart’s desire flaming forth 
into the night for the old, old Dance of the Sorcerers 
at the Witches’ Sabbath ! The whirl of the stars was 
about him ; once more he met the magic of the 
moon. The power of the wind, rushing from preci- 
pice and forest, leaping from cliff to cliff across the 
valleys, tore him away. ... He heard the cries of 
the dancers and their wild laughter, and with this 


ANCIENT SORCERIES 


127 


savage girl in his embrace he danced furiously about 
the dim Throne where sate the Figure with the sceptre 
of majesty. . . . 

Then, suddenly, all became hushed and still, and 
the fever died down a little in his heart. The calm 
moonlight flooded a courtyard empty and deserted. 
They had started. The procession was off into the 
sky. And he was left behind — alone. 

Vezin tiptoed softly across the room and unlocked 
the door. The murmur from the streets, growing 
momentarily as he advanced, met his ears. He 
made his way with the utmost caution down the 
corridor. At the head of the stairs he paused and 
listened. Below him, the hall where they had 
gathered was dark and still, but through opened 
doors and windows on the far side of the building 
came the sound of a great throng moving farther and 
farther into the distance. 

He made his way down the creaking wooden stairs, 
dreading yet longing to meet some straggler who 
should point the way, but finding no one ; across the 
dark hall, so lately thronged with living, moving 
things, and out through the opened front doors into 
the street. He could not believe that he was really 
left behind, really forgotten, that he had been pur- 
posely permitted to escape. It perplexed him. 

Nervously he peered about him, and up and down 
the street; then, seeing nothing, advanced slowly 
down the pavement. 

The whole town, as he went, showed itself empty 
and deserted, as though a great wind had blown 
everything alive out of it. The doors and windows of 
the houses stood open to the night ; nothing stirred ; 
moonlight and silence lay over all. The night lay 


128 


JOHN SILENCE 


about him like a cloak. The air, soft and cool, car- 
essed his cheek like the touch of a great furry paw. 
He gained confidence and began to walk quickly, 
though still keeping to the shadowed side. Nowhere 
could he discover the faintest sign of the great unholy 
exodus he knew had just taken place. The moon 
sailed high over all in a sky, cloudless and serene. 

Hardly realising where he was going, he crossed the 
open market-place and so came to the ramparts, 
whence he knew a pathway descended to the high 
road and along which he could make good his escape 
to one of the other little towns that lay to the 
northward, and so to the railway. 

But first he paused and gazed out over the 
scene at his feet where the great plain lay like a 
silver map of some dream country. The still beauty 
of it entered his heart, increasing his sense of 
bewilderment and unreality. No air stirred, the 
leaves of the plane trees stood motionless, the near 
details were defined with the sharpness of day 
against dark shadows, and in the distance the fields 
and woods melted away into haze and shimmering 
mistiness. 

But the breath caught in his throat and he stood 
stockstill as though transfixed when his gaze passed 
from the horizon and fell upon the near prospect in 
the depth of the valley at his feet. The whole lower 
slopes of the hill, that lay hid from the brightness of 
the moon, were aglow, and through the glare he saw 
countless moving forms, shifting thick and fast 
between the openings of the trees ; while overhead, 
like leaves driven by the wind, he discerned flying 
shapes that hovered darkly one moment against the 
sky and then settled down with cries and weird 


ANCIENT SORCERIES 


129 

singing through the branches into the region that was 
aflame. 

Spellbound, he stood and stared for a time that he 
could not measure. And then, moved by one of the 
terrible impulses that seemed to control the whole 
adventure, he climbed swiftly upon the top of the 
broad coping, and ba anced a moment where the 
valley gaped at his feet. But in that very instant, 
as he stood hovering, a sudden movement among 
the shadows of the houses caught his eye, and 
he turned to see the outline of a large animal 
dart swiftly across the open space behind him, and 
land with a flying leap upon the top of the wall a 
little lower down. It ran like the wind to his feet 
and then rose up beside him upon the ramparts. A 
shiver seemed to run through the moonlight, and 
his sight trembled for a second. His heart pulsed 
fearfully. Ils 6 stood beside him, peering into his 
face. 

Some dark substance, he saw, stained the girl’s face 
and skin, shining in the moonlight as she stretched 
her hands towards him ; she was dressed in wretched 
tattered garments that yet became her mightily; 
rue and vervain twined about her temples ; her eyes 
glittered with unholy light. He only just controlled 
the wild impulse to take her in his arms and leap 
with her from their giddy perch into the valley 
below. 

“ See ! ” she cried, pointing with an arm on which 
the rags fluttered in the rising wind towards the forest 
aglow in the distance. “ See where they await us ! 
The woods are alive ! Already the Great Ones are 
there, and the dance will soon begin ! The salve is 
here ! Anoint yourself and come ! ” 

9 


130 


JOHN SILENCE 


Though a moment before the sky was clear and 
cloudless, yet even while she spoke the face of the 
moon grew dark and the wind began to toss in the 
crests of the plane trees at his feet. Stray gusts 
brought the sounds of hoarse singing and crying 
from the lower slopes of the hill, and the pungent 
odour he had already noticed about the courtyard of 
the inn rose about him in the air. 

“ Transform, transform ! ” she cried again, her voice 
rising like a song. “ Rub well your skin before you fly. 
Come ! Come with me to the Sabbath, to the madness 
of its furious delight, to the sweet abandonment of its 
evil worship ! See ! the Great Ones are there, and 
the terrible Sacraments prepared. The Throne is 
occupied. Anoint and come ! Anoint and come ! ” 

She grew to the height of a tree beside him, leaping 
upon the wall with flaming eyes and hair strewn upon 
the night. He too began to change swiftly. Her 
hands touched the skin of his face and neck, streaking 
him with the burning salve that sent the old magic 
into his blood with the power before which fades all 
that is good. 

A wild roar came up to his ears from the heart of 
the wood, and the girl, when she heard it, leaped 
upon the wall in the frenzy of her wicked joy. 

“ Satan is there ! ” she screamed, rushing upon him 
and striving to draw him with her to the edge of the 
wall. “Satan has come! The Sacraments call us! 
Come, with your dear apostate soul, and we will 
worship and dance till the moon dies and the world 
is forgotten ! ” 

Just saving himself from the dreadful plunge, 
Vezin struggled to release himself from her grasp, 
while the passion tore at his reins and all but 


ANCIENT SORCERIES 


131 

mastered him. He shrieked aloud, not knowing 
what he said, and then he shrieked again. It was 
the old impulses, the old awful habits instinctively 
finding voice ; for though it seemed to him that he 
merely shrieked nonsense, the words he uttered 
really had meaning in them, and were intelligible. 
It was the ancient call. And it was heard below. 
It was answered. 

The wind whistled at the skirts of his coat as the 
air round him darkened with many flying forms 
crowding upwards out of the valley. The crying of 
hoarse voices smote upon his ears, coming closer 
Strokes of wind buffeted him, tearing him this way 
and that along the crumbling top of the stone 
wall ; and Ils 6 clung to him with her long shining 
arms, smooth and bare, holding him fast about 
the neck. But not Ils£ alone, for a dozen of them 
surrounded him, dropping out of the air. The 
pungent odour of the anointed bodies stifled him, 
exciting him to the old madness of the Sabbath, the 
dance of the witches and sorcerers doing honour to 
the personified Evil of the world. 

“ Anoint and away ! Anoint and away ! ” they 
cried in wild chorus about him. “To the Dance that 
never dies ! To the sweet and fearful fantasy of 
evil ! ” 

Another moment and he would have yielded and 
gone, for his will turned soft and the flood of 
passionate memory all but overwhelmed him, when 
— so can a small thing alter the whole course of an 
adventure — he caught his foot upon a loose stone 
in the edge of the wall, and then fell with a sudden 
crash on to the ground below. But he fell towards 
the houses, in the open space of dust and cobble 


132 


JOHN SILENCE 


stones, and fortunately not into the gaping depth 
of the valley on the farther side. 

And they, too, came in a tumbling heap about 
him, like flies upon a piece of food, but as they fell 
he was released for a moment from the power of 
their touch, and in that brief instant of freedom there 
flashed into his mind the sudden intuition that saved 
him. Before he could regain his feet he saw them 
scrabbling awkwardly back upon the wall, as though 
bat-like they could only fly by dropping from a 
height, and had no hold upon him in the open. 
Then, seeing them perched there in a row like cats 
upon a roof, all dark and singularly shapeless, their 
eyes like lamps, the sudden memory came back to 
him of list's terror at the sight of fire. 

Quick as a flash he found his matches and lit the 
dead leaves that lay under the wall. 

Dry and withered, they caught fire at once, 
and the wind carried the flame in a long line down 
the length of the wall, licking upwards as it ran ; 
and with shrieks and wailings, the crowded row of 
forms upon the top melted away into the air on the 
other side, and were gone with a great rush and 
whirring of their bodies down into the heart of the 
haunted valley, leaving Vezin breathless and shaken 
in the middle of the deserted ground. 

“ list ! ” he called feebly ; “ Ilse ! ” for his heart ached 
to think that she was really gone to the great Dance 
without him, and that he had lost the opportunity of 
its fearful joy. Yet at the same time his relief was 
so great, and he was so dazed and troubled in mind 
with the whole thing, that he hardly knew what he 
was saying, and only cried aloud in the fierce storm 
of his emotion. . , . 


ANCIENT SORCERIES 


133 


The fire under the wall ran its course, and the 
moonlight came out again, soft and clear, from its 
temporary eclipse. With one last shuddering look 
at the ruined ramparts, and a feeling of horrid wonder 
for the haunted valley beyond, where the shapes still 
crowded and flew, he turned his face towards the 
town and slowly made his way in the direction of 
the hotel. 

And as he went, a great wailing of cries, and a 
sound of howling, followed him from the gleaming 
forest below, growing fainter and fainter with the 
bursts of wind as he disappeared between the houses. 

VI 

“ It may seem rather abrupt to you, this sudden 
tame ending,” said Arthur Vezin, glancing with 
flushed face and timid eyes at Dr. Silence sitting 
there with his notebook, “ but the fact is — er — from 
that moment my memory seems to have failed rather. 
I have no distinct recollection of how I got home or 
what precisely I did. 

“ It appears I never went back to the inn at all. I 
only dimly recollect racing down a long white road 
in the moonlight, past woods and villages, still and 
deserted, and then the dawn came up, and I saw the 
towers of a biggish town and so came to a station. 

“ But, long before that, I remember pausing some- 
where on the road and looking back to where the 
hill-town of my adventure stood up in the moonlight, 
and thinking how exactly like a great monstrous cat 
it lay there upon the plain, its huge front paws lying 
down the two main streets, and the twin and broken 
towers of the cathedral marking its torn ears against 


134 


JOHN SILENCE 


the sky. That picture stays in my mind with the 
utmost vividness to this day. 

“ Another thing remains in my mind from that 
escape — namely, the sudden sharp reminder that I 
had not paid my bill, and the decision I made, stand- 
ing there on the dusty highroad, that the small 
baggage I had left behind would more than settle 
for my indebtedness. 

“ For the rest, I can only tell you that I got coffee 
and bread at a cafe on the outskirts of this town I 
had come to, and soon after found my way to the 
station and caught a train later in the day. That 
same evening I reached London.” 

“And how long altogether,” asked John Silence 
quietly, “do you think you stayed in the town of 
the adventure ? ” 

Vezin looked up sheepishly. 

“ I was coming to that,” he resumed, with apologetic 
wrigglings of his body. “ In London I found that 
I was a whole week out in my reckoning of time. 
I had stayed over a week in the town, and it ought 
to have been September 15th, — instead of which it 
was only September 10th ! ” 

“ So that, in reality, you had only stayed a night 
or two in the inn ? ” queried the doctor. 

Vezin hesitated before replying. He shuffled 
upon the mat. 

“ I must have gained time somewhere,” he said at 
length — “ somewhere or somehow. I certainly had a 
week to my credit. I can’t explain it. I can only 
give you the fact.” 

“ And this happened to you last year, since when 
you have never been back to the place ? ” 

“Last autumn, yes,” murmured Vezin; “and I 


ANCIENT SORCERIES 


135 

have never dared to go back. I think I never want 
to” 

“ And, tell me,” asked Dr. Silence at length, when 
he saw that the little man had evidently come to 
the end of his words and had nothing more to say, 
“had you ever read up the subject of the old 
witchcraft practices during the Middle Ages, or 
been at all interested in the subject?” 

“ Never ! ” declared Vezin emphatically. “ I had 
never given a thought to such matters so far as 
I know ” 

“ Or to the question of reincarnation, perhaps ? ” 

“ Never — before my adventure ; but I have since,” 
he replied significantly. 

There was, however, something still on the man’s 
mind that he wished to relieve himself of by con- 
fession, yet could with difficulty bring himself to 
mention ; and it was only after the sympathetic 
tactfulness of the doctor had provided numerous 
openings that he at length availed himself of one 
of them, and stammered that he would like to show 
him the marks he still had on his neck where, he 
said, the girl had touched him with her anointed 
hands. 

He took off his collar after infinite fumbling 
hesitation, and lowered his shirt a little for the doctor 
to see. And there, on the surface of the skin, 
lay a faint reddish line across the shoulder and 
extending a little way down the back towards the 
spine. It certainly indicated exactly the position 
an arm might have taken in the act of embracing. 
And on the other side of the neck, slightly higher 
up, was a similar mark, though not quite so clearly 
defined. 


JOHN SILENCE 


136 

“ That was where she held me that night on the 
ramparts,” he whispered, a strange light coming and 
going in his eyes. 

It was some weeks later when I again found 
occasion to consult John Silence concerning another 
extraordinary case that had come under my notice, 
and we fell to discussing Vezin’s story. Since hear- 
ing it, the doctor had made investigations on his own 
account, and one of his secretaries had discovered 
that Vezin’s ancestors had actually lived for genera- 
tions in the very town where the adventure came to 
him. Two of them, both women, had been tried and 
convicted as witches, and had been burned alive at 
the stake. Moreover, it had not been difficult to 
prove that the very inn where Vezin stayed was 
built about 1700 upon the spot where the funeral 
pyres stood and the executions took place. The 
town was a sort of headquarters for all the sorcerers 
and witches of the entire region, and after conviction 
they were burnt there literally by scores. 

“ It seems strange,” continued the doctor, “ that 
Vezin should have remained ignorant of all this ; 
but, on the other hand, it was not the kind of history 
that successive generations would have been anxious 
to keep alive, or to repeat to their children. There- 
fore I am inclined to think he still knows nothing 
about it. 

“ The whole adventure seems to have been a very 
vivid revival of the memories of an earlier life, caused 
by coming directly into contact with the living 
forces still intense enough to hang about the place, 
and, by a most singular chance too, with the very 
souls who had taken part with him in the events 


ANCIENT SORCERIES 


137 


of that particular life. For the mother and daughter 
who impressed him so strangely must have been 
leading actors, with himself, in the scenes and 
practices of witchcraft which at that period dominated 
the imaginations of the whole country. 

“ One has only to read the histories of the times 
to know that these witches claimed the power of 
transforming themselves into various animals, both 
for the purposes of disguise and also to convey them- 
selves swiftly to the scenes of their imaginary orgies. 
Lycanthropy, or the power to change themselves 
into wolves, was everywhere believed in, and the 
ability to transform themselves into cats by rubbing 
their bodies with a special salve or ointment pro- 
vided by Satan himself, found equal credence. The 
witchcraft trials abound in evidences of such universal 
beliefs.” 

Dr. Silence quoted chapter and verse from many 
writers on the subject, and showed how every detail 
of Vezin’s adventure had a basis in the practices 
of those dark days. 

“ But that the entire affair took place sub- 
jectively in the man’s own consciousness, I have 
no doubt,” he went on, in reply to my questions; 
“ for my secretary who has been to the town to in- 
vestigate, discovered his signature in the visitors’ 
book, and proved by it that he had arrived on 
September 8th, and left suddenly without paying 
his bill. He left two days later, and they still were 
in possession of his dirty brown bag and some 
tourist clothes. I paid a few francs in settlement of 
his debt, and have sent his luggage on to him. The 
daughter was absent from home, but the proprietress, 
a large woman very much as he described her, told 


138 


JOHN SILENCE 


my secretary that he had seemed a very strange, 
absent-minded kind of gentleman, and after his 
disappearance she had feared for a long time that 
he had met with a violent end in the neighbouring 
forest where he used to roam about alone. 

“ I should like to have obtained a personal inter- 
view with the daughter so as to ascertain how much 
was subjective and how much actually took place 
with her as Vezin told it. For her dread of fire and 
the sight of burning must, of course, have been the 
intuitive memory of her former painful death at the 
stake, and have thus explained why he fancied more 
than once that he saw her through smoke and flame.” 

“ And that mark on his skin, for instance ? ” I 
inquired. 

“Merely the marks produced by hysterical brooding,” 
he replied, “ like the stigmata of the religieuses , and 
the bruises which appear on the bodies of hypnotised 
subjects who have been told to expect them. This 
is very common and easily explained. Only it seems 
curious that these marks should have remained so 
long in Vezin’s case. Usually they disappear quickly .” 

“ Obviously he is still thinking about it all, brood- 
ing, and living it all over again,” I ventured. 

“Probably. And this makes me fear that the 
end of his trouble is not yet. We shall hear of 
him again. It is a case, alas! I can do little to 
alleviate.” 

Dr. Silence spoke gravely and with sadness in his 
voice. 

“ And what do you make of the Frenchman in the 
train ? ” I asked further — “ the man who warned him 
against the place, d cause du sommeil et d cause des 
chats ? Surely a very singular incident ? ” 


ANCIENT SORCERIES 


139 


“ A very singular incident indeed,” he made 
answer slowly, “ and one I can only explain on the 
basis of a highly improbable coincidence ” 

“ Namely? ” 

“ That the man was one who had himself stayed 
in the town and undergone there a similar experience. 
I should like to find this man and ask him. But 
the crystal is useless here, for I have no slightest 
clue to go upon, and I can only conclude that some 
singular psychic affinity, some force still active in his 
being out of the same past life, drew him thus to 
the personality of Vezin, and enabled him to fear 
what might happen to him, and thus to warn him as 
he did. 

“Yes,” he presently continued, half talking to 
himself, “ I suspect in this case that Vezin was 
swept into the vortex of forces arising out of the 
intense activities of a past life, and that he lived 
over again a scene in which he had often played 
a leading part centuries before. For strong actions 
set up forces that are so slow to exhaust them- 
selves, they may be said in a sense never to die. 
In this case they were not vital enough to render 
the illusion complete, so that the little man found 
himself caught in a very distressing confusion of the 
present and the past ; yet he was sufficiently sensitive 
to recognise that it was true, and to fight against the 
degradation of returning, even in memory, to a 
former and lower state of development. 

“ Ah yes ! ” he continued, crossing the floor to 
gaze at the darkening sky, and seemingly quite 
oblivious of my presence, “subliminal up-rushes of 
memory like this can be exceedingly painful, and 
sometimes exceedingly dangerous. I only trust that 


140 


JOHN SILENCE 


this gentle soul may soon escape from this obsession 
of a passionate and tempestuous past. But I doubt 
it, I doubt it.” 

His voice was hushed with sadness as he spoke, 
and when he turned back into the room again there 
was an expression of profound yearning upon his 
face, the yearning of a soul whose desire to help is 
sometimes greater than his power. 


CASE III 


THE NEMESIS OF FIRE 



CASE III 


THE NEMESIS OF FIRE 

I 

By some means which I never could fathom, John 
Silence always contrived to keep the compartment 
to himself, and as the train had a clear run of two 
hours before the first stop, there was ample time to 
go over the preliminary facts of the case. He had 
telephoned to me that very morning, and even 
through the disguise of the miles of wire the thrill 
of incalculable adventure had sounded in his 
voice. 

“ As if it were an ordinary country visit,” he called, 
in reply to my question ; “ and don’t forget to bring 
your gun.” 

“With blank cartridges, I suppose?” for I knew 
his rigid principles with regard to the taking of life, 
and guessed that the guns were merely for some 
obvious purpose of disguise. 

Then he thanked me for coming, mentioned the 

train, snapped down the receiver, and left me vibrating 

with the excitement of anticipation to do my packing. 

For the honour of accompanying Dr. John Silence on 

one of his big cases was what many would have 

considered an empty honour — and risky. Certainly 
143 


144 


JOHN SILENCE 


the adventure held all manner of possibilities, and I 
arrived at Waterloo with the feelings of a man who 
is about to embark on some dangerous and peculiar 
mission in which the dangers he expects to run will 
not be the ordinary dangers to life and limb, but of 
some secret character difficult to name and still more 
difficult to cope with. 

“ The Manor House has a high sound,” he told me, 
as we sat with our feet up and talked, “ but I believe 
it is little more than an overgrown farmhouse in the 

desolate heather country beyond D , and its 

owner, Colonel Wragge, a retired soldier with a 
taste for books, lives there practically alone, I 
understand, with an elderly invalid sister. So you 
need not look forward to a lively visit, unless the 
case provides some excitement of its own.” 

“ Which is likely?” 

By way of reply he handed me a letter marked 
“Private.” It was dated a week ago, and signed 
“Yours faithfully, Horace Wragge.” 

“ He heard of me, you see, through Captain 
Anderson,” the doctor explained modestly, as though 
his fame were not almost world-wide ; “ you remember 
that Indian obsession case ” 

I read the letter. Why it should have been marked 
private was difficult to understand. It was very brief, 
direct, and to the point. It referred by way of intro- 
duction to Captain Anderson, and then stated quite 
simply that the writer needed help of a peculiar kind 
and asked for a personal interview — a morning inter- 
view, since it was impossible for him to be absent from 
the house at night. The letter was dignified even to 
the point of abruptness, and it is difficult to explain 
how it managed to convey to me the impression of a 


THE NEMESIS OF FIRE 


145 


strong man, shaken and perplexed. Perhaps the 
restraint of the wording, and the mystery of the 
affair had something to do with it ; and the reference 
to the Anderson case, the horror of which lay still 
vivid in my memory, may have touched the sense 
of something rather ominous and alarming. But, 
whatever the cause, there was no doubt that an 
impression of serious peril rose somehow out of 
that white paper with the few lines of firm writing, 
and the spirit of a deep uneasiness ran between the 
words and reached the mind without any visible 
form of expression. 

“ And when you saw him ? ” I asked, returning 

the letter as the train rushed clattering noisily 
through Clapham Junction. 

“ I have not seen him,” was the reply. “ The 
man’s mind was charged to the brim when he wrote 
that; full of vivid mental pictures. Notice the 
restraint of it. For the main character of his case 
psychometry could be depended upon, and the scrap 
of paper his hand has touched is sufficient to give to 
another mind — a sensitive and sympathetic mind — 
clear mental pictures of what is going on. I think 
I have a very sound general idea of his problem.” 

“ So there may be excitement after all ? ” 

John Silence waited a moment before he replied. 

“Something very serious is amiss there,” he said 
gravely, at length. “ Some one — not himself, I gather, 
— has been meddling with a rather dangerous kind of 
gunpowder. So — yes, there may be excitement, as 
you put it.” 

“And my duties?” I asked, with a decidedly 
growing interest. “Remember, I am your ‘assist- 
ant.’ ” 

10 


146 


JOHN SILENCE 


“Behave like an intelligent confidential secretary. 
Observe everything, without seeming to. Say 
nothing — nothing that means anything. Be present 
at all interviews. I may ask a good deal of you, for 
if my impressions are correct this is ” 

He broke off suddenly. 

“But I won’t tell you my impressions yet” he 
resumed after a moment’s thought. “Just watch 
and listen as the case proceeds. Form your own 
impressions and cultivate your intuitions. We come 
as ordinary visitors, of course,” he added, a twinkle 
showing for an instant in his eye ; “ hence, the guns.” 

Though disappointed not to hear more, I recognised 
the wisdom of his words and knew how valueless my 
impressions would be once the powerful suggestion of 
having heard his own lay behind them. I likewise 
reflected that intuition joined to a sense of humour 
was of more use to a man than double the quantity 
of mere “ brains,” as such. 

Before putting the letter away, however, he handed 
it back, telling me to place it against my forehead for 
a few moments and then describe any pictures that 
came spontaneously into my mind. 

“Don’t deliberately look for anything. Just 
imagine you see the inside of the eyelid, and wait 
for pictures that rise against its dark screen.” 

I followed his instructions, making my mind as 
nearly a blank as possible. But no visions came. I 
saw nothing but the lines of light that pass to and 
fro like the changes of a kaleidoscope across the 
blackness. A momentary sensation of warmth came 
and went curiously. 

“ You see — what ? ” he asked presently. 

“ Nothing,” I was obliged to admit disappointedly ; 


THE NEMESIS OF FIRE 


147 


“nothing but the usual flashes of light one always 
sees. Only, perhaps, they are more vivid than 
usual.” 

He said nothing by way of comment or reply. 

“ And they group themselves now and then,” I con- 
tinued, with painful candour, for I longed to see the 
pictures he had spoken of, “group themselves into 
globes and round balls of fire, and the lines that 
flash about sometimes look like triangles and crosses 
— almost like geometrical figures. Nothing more.” 

I opened my eyes again, and gave him back the 
letter. 

“It makes my head hot,” I said, feeling some- 
how unworthy for not seeing anything of interest. 
But the look in his eyes arrested my attention at 
once. 

“That sensation of heat is important,” he said 
significantly. 

“ It was certainly real, and rather uncomfortable,” 
I replied, hoping he would expand and explain. 
“ There was a distinct feeling of warmth — internal 
warmth somewhere — oppressive in a sense.” 

“That is interesting,” he remarked, putting the 
letter back in his pocket, and settling himself in the 
corner with newspapers and books. He vouchsafed 
nothing more, and I knew the uselessness of trying to 
make him talk. Following his example I settled 
likewise with magazines into my corner. But when 
I closed my eyes again to look for the flashing lights 
and the sensation of heat, I found nothing but the 
usual phantasmagoria of the day’s events — faces, 
scenes, memories, — and in due course I fell asleep 
and then saw nothing at all of any kind. 

When we left the train, after six hours’ travelling, 


148 


JOHN SILENCE 


at a little wayside station standing without trees in a 
world of sand and heather, the late October shadows 
had already dropped their sombre veil upon the 
landscape, and the sun dipped almost out of sight 
behind the moorland hills. In a high dogcart, 
behind a fast horse, we were soon rattling across the 
undulating stretches of an open and bleak country, 
the keen air stinging our cheeks and the scents of 
pine and bracken strong about us. Bare hills were 
faintly visible against the horizon, and the coachman 
pointed to a bank of distant shadows on our left 
where he told us the sea lay. Occasional stone 
farmhouses, standing back from the road among 
straggling fir trees, and large black barns that seemed 
to shift past us with a movement of their own in the 
gloom, were the only signs of humanity and civilisa- 
tion that we saw, until at the end of a bracing five 
miles the lights of the lodge gates flared before us 
and we plunged into a thick grove of pine trees 
that concealed the Manor House up to the moment 
of actual arrival. 

Colonel Wragge himself met us in the hall. He 
was the typical army officer who had seen service, 
real service, and found himself in the process. He 
was tall and well built, broad in the shoulders, but 
lean as a greyhound, with grave eyes, rather stern, 
and a moustache turning grey. I judged him to 
be about sixty years of age, but his movements 
showed a suppleness of strength and agility that 
contradicted the years. The face was full of 
character and resolution, the face of a man to be 
depended upon, and the straight grey eyes, it seemed 
to me, wore a veil of perplexed anxiety that he 
made no attempt to disguise. The whole appear- 


THE NEMESIS OF FIRE 


149 


ance of the man at once clothed the adventure 
with gravity and importance. A matter that gave 
such a man cause for serious alarm, I felt, must be 
something real and of genuine moment. 

His speech and manner, as he welcomed us, were 
like his letter, simple and sincere. He had a nature 
as direct and undeviating as a bullet. Thus, he 
showed plainly his surprise that Dr. Silence had 
not come alone. 

“My confidential secretary, Mr. Hubbard,” the 
doctor said, introducing me, and the steady gaze 
and powerful shake of the hand I then received 
were well calculated, I remember thinking, to drive 
home the impression that here was a man who was 
not to be trifled with, and whose perplexity must 
spring from some very real and tangible cause. 
And, quite obviously, he was relieved that we had 
come. His welcome was unmistakably genuine. 

He led us at once into a room, half library, half 
smoking-room, that opened out of the low-ceilinged 
hall. The Manor House gave the impression of a 
rambling and glorified farmhouse, solid, ancient, 
comfortable, and wholly unpretentious. And so it 
was. Only the heat of the place struck me as 
unnatural. This room with the blazing fire may 
have seemed uncomfortably warm after the long 
drive through the night air; yet it seemed to me 
that the hall itself, and the whole atmosphere of the 
house, breathed a warmth that hardly belonged to 
well-filled grates or the pipes of hot air and water. 
It was not the heat of the greenhouse; it was 
an oppressive heat that somehow got into the 
head and mind. It stirred a curious sense of 
uneasiness in me, and I caught myself thinking of 


JOHN SILENCE 


150 

the sensation of warmth that had emanated from 
the letter in the train. 

I heard him thanking Dr. Silence for having come ; 
there was no preamble, and the exchange of 
civilities was of the briefest description. Evidently 
here was a man who, like my companion, loved 
action rather than talk. His manner was straight- 
forward and direct. I saw him in a flash : puzzled, 
worried, harassed into a state of alarm by something 
he could not comprehend ; forced to deal with things 
he would have preferred to despise, yet facing it all 
with dogged seriousness and making no attempt to 
conceal that he felt secretly ashamed of his 
incompetence. 

“ So I cannot offer you much entertainment 
beyond that of my own company, and the queer 
business that has been going on here, and is still 
going on,” he said, with a slight inclination of the 
head towards me by way of including me in his 
confidence. 

“ I think, Colonel Wragge,” replied John Silence 
impressively, “ that we shall none of us find the 
time hang heavy. I gather we shall have our hands 
full.” 

The two men looked at one another for the space 
of some seconds, and there was an indefinable 
quality in their silence which for the first time 
made me admit a swift question into my mind ; 
and I wondered a little at my rashness in coming 
with so little reflection into a big case of this incal- 
culable doctor. But no answer suggested itself, and 
to withdraw was, of course, inconceivable. The gates 
had closed behind me now, and the spirit of the 
adventure was already besieging my mind with its 


THE NEMESIS OF FIRE 


1 5 i 

advance guard of a thousand little hopes and 
fears. 

Explaining that he would wait till after dinner to 
discuss anything serious, as no reference was ever 
made before his sister, he led the way upstairs and 
showed us personally to our rooms ; and it was just 
as I was finishing dressing that a knock came at 
my door and Dr. Silence entered. 

He was always what is called a serious man, so 
that even in moments of comedy you felt he never lost 
sight of the profound gravity of life, but as he came 
across the room to me I caught the expression of 
his face and understood in a flash that he was now 
in his most grave and earnest mood. He looked 
almost troubled. I stopped fumbling with my black 
tie and stared. 

“ It is serious,” he said, speaking in a low voice, 
“ more so even than I imagined. Colonel Wragge’s 
control over his thoughts concealed a great deal in my 
psychometrising of the letter. I looked in to warn you 
to keep yourself well in hand — generally speaking.” 

“ Haunted house?” I asked, conscious of a distinct 
shiver down my back. 

But he smiled gravely at the question. 

“ Haunted House of Life more likely,” he replied, 
and a look came into his eyes which I had only seen 
there when a human soul was in the toils and he was 
thick in the fight of rescue. He was stirred in the 
deeps. 

“Colonel Wragge — or the sister?” I asked 
hurriedly, for the gong was sounding. 

“ Neither directly,” he said from the door. 
“ Something far older, something very, very remote 
indeed. This thing has to do with the ages, unless I 


152 


JOHN SILENCE 


am mistaken greatly, the ages on which the mists of 
memory have long lain undisturbed.” 

He came across the floor very quickly with a 
finger on his lips, looking at me with a peculiar 
searchingness of gaze. 

“ Are you aware yet of anything— odd here ? ” he 
asked in a whisper. “Anything you cannot quite 
define, for instance. Tell me, Hubbard, for I want 
to know all your impressions. They may help me.” 

I shook my head, avoiding his gaze, for there was 
something in the eyes that scared me a little. But 
he was so in earnest that I set my mind keenly 
searching. 

“Nothing yet,” I replied truthfully, wishing I could 
confess to a real emotion ; “ nothing but the strange 
heat of the place.” 

He gave a little jump forward in my direction. 

“ The heat again, that’s it ! ” he exclaimed, as 
though glad of my corroboration. “ And how would 
you describe it, perhaps ? ” he asked quickly, with a 
hand on the door knob. 

“ It doesn’t seem like ordinary physical heat,” I 
said, casting about in my thoughts for a definition. 

“ More a mental heat,” he interrupted, “ a glowing 
of thought and desire, a sort of feverish warmth of 
the spirit. Isn’t that it?” 

I admitted that he had exactly described my 
sensations. 

“ Good ! ” he said, as he opened the door, and with 
an indescribable gesture that combined a warning to 
be ready with a sign of praise for my correct 
intuition, he was gone. 

I hurried after him, and found the two men waiting 
for me in front of the fire. 


THE NEMESIS OF FIRE 


153 


“ I ought to warn you,” our host was saying as I 
came in, “that my sister, whom you will meet at 
dinner, is not aware of the real object of your visit. 
She is under the impression that we are interested in 
the same line of study — folklore — and that your 
researches have led to my seeking acquaintance. 
She comes to dinner in her chair, you know. It will 
be a great pleasure to her to meet you both. We 
have few visitors.” 

So that on entering the dining-room we were 
prepared to find Miss Wragge already at her place, 
seated in a sort of bath-chair. She was a vivacious 
and charming old lady, with smiling expression and 
bright eyes, and she chatted all through dinner with 
unfailing spontaneity. She had that face, unlined and 
fresh, that some people carry through life from the 
cradle to the grave ; her smooth plump cheeks were 
all pink and white, and her hair, still dark, was 
divided into two glossy and sleek halves on either 
side of a careful parting. She wore gold-rimmed 
glasses, and at her throat was a large scarab of green 
jasper that made a very handsome brooch. 

Her brother and Dr. Silence talked little, so that 
most of the conversation was carried on between 
herself and me, and she told me a great deal about 
the history of the old house, most of which I fear I 
listened to with but half an ear. 

“ And when Cromwell stayed here,” she babbled 
on, “ he occupied the very rooms upstairs that used 
to be mine. But my brother thinks it safer for me 
to sleep on the ground floor now in case of fire.” 

And this sentence has stayed in my memory only 
because of the sudden way her brother interrupted 
her and instantly led the conversation on to another 


154 


JOHN SILENCE 


topic. The passing reference to fire seemed to have 
disturbed him, and thenceforward he directed the talk 
himself. 

It was difficult to believe that this lively and 
animated old lady, sitting beside me and taking so 
eager an interest in the affairs of life, was practically, 
we understood, without the use of her lower limbs, 
and that her whole existence for years had been 
passed between the sofa, the bed, and the bath-chair 
in which she chatted so naturally at the dinner-table. 
She made no allusion to her affliction until the 
dessert was reached, and then, touching a bell, she 
made us a witty little speech about leaving us “ like 
time, on noiseless feet,” and was wheeled out of 
the room by the butler and carried off to her apart- 
ments at the other end of the house. 

And the rest of us were not long in following suit, 
for Dr. Silence and myself were quite as eager to 
learn the nature of our errand as our host was to 
impart it to us. He led us down a long flagged 
passage to a room at the very end of the house, a 
room provided with double doors, and windows, I 
saw, heavily shuttered. Books lined the walls on 
every side, and a large desk in the bow window was 
piled up with volumes, some open, some shut, some 
showing scraps of paper stuck between the leaves, 
and all smothered in a general cataract of untidy 
foolscap and loose half sheets. 

“ My study and workroom,” explained Colonel 
Wragge, with a delightful touch of innocent pride, as 
though he were a very serious scholar. He placed 
arm-chairs for us round the fire. “ Here,” he added 
significantly, “ we shall be safe from interruption and 
can talk securely.” 


THE NEMESIS OF FIRE 


155 


During dinner the manner of the doctor had been 
all that was natural and spontaneous, though it was 
impossible for me, knowing him as I did, not to be 
aware that he was subconsciously very keenly alert 
and already receiving upon the ultra-sensitive surface 
of his mind various and vivid impressions ; and 
there was now something in the gravity of his face, 
as well as in the significant tone of Colonel Wragge’s 
speech, and something, too, in the fact that we three 
were shut away in this private chamber about to listen 
to things probably strange, and certainly mysterious — 
something in all this that touched my imagination 
sharply and sent an undeniable thrill along my 
nerves. Taking the chair indicated by my host, I 
lit my cigar and waited for the opening of the 
attack, fully conscious that we were now too far gone 
in the adventure to admit of withdrawal, and 
wondering a little anxiously where it was going to 
lead. 

What I expected precisely, it is hard to say. 
Nothing definite, perhaps. Only the sudden change 
was dramatic. A few hours before the prosaic 
atmosphere of Piccadilly was about me, and now 
I was sitting in a secret chamber of this remote old 
building waiting to hear an account of things that 
held possibly the genuine heart of terror. I thought 
of the dreary moors and hills outside, and the dark 
pine copses soughing in the wind of night; I re- 
membered my companion’s singular words up in 
my bedroom before dinner ; and then I turned and 
noted carefully the stern countenance of the Colonel 
as he faced us and lit his big black cigar before 
speaking. 

The threshold of an adventure, I reflected as I 


156 


JOHN SILENCE 


waited for the first words, is always the most 
thrilling moment — until the climax comes. 

But Colonel Wragge hesitated — mentally — a long 
time before he began. He talked briefly of our 
journey, the weather, the country, and other com- 
paratively trivial topics, while he sought about in 
his mind for an appropriate entry into the subject 
that was uppermost in the thoughts of all of us. 
The fact was he found it a difficult matter to speak 
of at all, and it was Dr. Silence who finally showed 
him the way over the hedge. 

“Mr Hubbard will take a few notes when you 
are ready — you won’t object,” he suggested ; “ I can 
give my undivided attention in this way.” 

“By all means,” turning to reach some of the 
loose sheets on the writing table, and glancing at 
me. He still hesitated a little, I thought. “The 
fact is,” he said apologetically, “ I wondered if it 
was quite fair to trouble you so soon. The day- 
light might suit you better to hear what I have to 
tell. Your sleep, I mean, might be less disturbed, 
perhaps.” 

“ I appreciate your thoughtfulness,” John Silence 
replied with his gentle smile, taking command as 
it were from that moment, “ but really we are both 
quite immune. There is nothing, I think, that could 
prevent either of us sleeping, except — an outbreak 
of fire, or some such very physical disturbance.” 

Colonel Wragge raised his eyes and looked fixedly 
at him. This reference to an outbreak of fire I felt 
sure was made with a purpose. It certainly had the 
desired effect of removing from our host’s manner 
the last signs of hesitancy. 

“ Forgive me,” he said. “ Of course, I know 


THE NEMESIS OF FIRE 


157 


nothing of your methods in matters of this kind — 
so, perhaps, you would like me to begin at once 
and give you an outline of the situation?” 

Dr. Silence bowed his agreement. “ I can then 
take my precautions accordingly,” he added calmly. 

The soldier looked up for a moment as though 
he did not quite gather the meaning of these 
words ; but he made no further comment and 
turned at once to tackle a subject on which he 
evidently talked with diffidence and unwillingness. 

" It’s all so utterly out of my line of things,” he 
began, puffing out clouds of cigar smoke between 
his words, “and there’s so little to tell with any 
real evidence behind it, that it’s almost impossible 
to make a consecutive story for you. It’s the 
total cumulative effect that is so — so disquieting.” 
He chose his words with care, as though deter- 
mined not to travel one hair’s breadth beyond the 
truth. 

“ I came into this place twenty years ago when 
my elder brother died,” he continued, “but could 
not afford to live here then. My sister, whom you 
met at dinner, kept house for him till the end, 
and during all these years, while I was seeing 
service abroad, she had an eye to the place — for 
we never got a satisfactoiy tenant — and saw that 
it was not allowed to go to ruin. I myself took 
possession, however, only a year ago. 

“My brother,” he went on, after a perceptible 
pause, “spent much of his time away, too. He 
was a great traveller, and filled the house with 
stuff he brought home from all over the world. 
The laundry — a small detached building beyond 
the servants’ quarters — he turned into a regular 


i 5 8 


JOHN SILENCE 


little museum. The curios and things I have 
cleared away — they collected dust and were always 
getting broken — but the laundry-house you shall 
see tomorrow.” 

Colonel Wragge spoke with such deliberation 
and with so many pauses that this beginning took 
him a long time. But at this point he came to 
a full stop altogether. Evidently there was some- 
thing he wished to say that cost him considerable 
effort. At length he looked up steadily into my 
companion’s face. 

“May I ask you — that is, if you won’t think it 
strange,” he said, and a sort of hush came over 
his voice and manner, “whether you have noticed 
anything at all unusual — anything queer, since you 
came into the house ? ” 

Dr. Silence answered without a moment’s hesitation. 

“ I have,” he said. “ There is a curious sensation 
of heat in the place.” 

“ Ah ! ” exclaimed the other, with a slight 
start. “You have noticed it. This unaccountable 
heat ” 

“But its cause, I gather, is not in the house 
itself — but outside,” I was astonished to hear the 
doctor add. 

Colonel Wragge rose from his chair and turned 
to unhook a framed map that hung upon the wall. 
I got the impression that the movement was made 
with the deliberate purpose of concealing his face. 

“Your diagnosis, I believe, is amazingly accurate,” 
he said after a moment, turning round with the 
map in his hands. “ Though, of course, I can 
have no idea how you should guess ” 

John Silence shrugged his shoulders expressively. 


THE NEMESIS OF FIRE 


1 59 


“Merely my impression,” he said. “If you pay 
attention to impressions, and do not allow them 
to be confused by deductions of the intellect, 
you will often find them surprisingly, uncannily, 
accurate.” 

Colonel Wragge resumed his seat and laid the 
map upon his knees. His face was very thought- 
ful as he plunged abruptly again into his story. 

“ On coming into possession,” he said, looking 
us alternately in the face, “ I found a crop of 
stories of the most extraordinary and impossible 
kind I had ever heard — stories which at first I 
treated with amused indifference, but later was 
forced to regard seriously, if only to keep my servants. 
These stories I thought I traced to the fact of 
my brother’s death — and, in a way, I think so 
still.” 

He leant forward and handed the map to Dr. 
Silence. 

“ It’s an old plan of the estate,” he explained, 
“but accurate enough for our purpose, and I wish 
you would note the position of the plantations marked 
upon it, especially those near the house. That one,” 
indicating the spot with his finger, “is called the 
Twelve Acre Plantation. It was just there, on the 
side nearest the house, that my brother and the head 
keeper met their deaths.” 

He spoke as a man forced to recognise facts that 
he deplored, and would have preferred to leave un- 
touched — things he personally would rather have 
treated with ridicule if possible. It made his words 
peculiarly dignified and impressive, and I listened 
with an increasing uneasiness as to the sort of help 
the doctor would look to me for later. It seemed as 


i6o 


JOHN SILENCE 


though I were a spectator of some drama of 
mystery in which any moment I might be summoned 
to play a part. 

“ It was twenty years ago,” continued the Colonel, 
“but there was much talk about it at the time, 
unfortunately, and you may, perhaps, have heard of 
the affair. Stride, the keeper, was a passionate, 
hot-tempered man, but 1 regret to say, so was my 
brother, and quarrels between them seem to have 
been frequent.” 

“ I do not recall the affair,” said the doctor. “ May 
I ask what was the cause of death?” Something 
in his voice made me prick up my ears for the 
reply. 

“The keeper, it was said, from suffocation. And 
at the inquest the doctors averred that both men 
had been dead the same length of time when found.” 

“And your brother?” asked John Silence, noticing 
the omission, and listening intently. 

“ Equally mysterious,” said our host, speaking in 
a low voice with effort. “ But there was one distressing 
feature I think I ought to mention. For those who 
saw the face — I did not see it myself — and though 
Stride carried a gun its chambers were undis- 
charged ” He stammered and hesitated with 

confusion. Again that sense of terror moved be- 
tween his words. He stuck. 

“Yes,” said the chief listener sympathetically. 

“ My brother’s face, they said, looked as though it 
had been scorched. It had been swept, as it were, 
by something that burned — blasted. It was, I am 
told, quite dreadful. The bodies were found lying 
side by side, faces downwards, both pointing away 
from the wood, as though they had been in the act of 


THE NEMESIS OF FIRE 161 

running, and not more than a dozen yards from its 
edge.” 

Dr. Silence made no comment. He appeared 
to be studying the map attentively. 

“ I did not see the face myself,” repeated the 
other, his manner somehow expressing the sense 
of awe he contrived to keep out of his voice, “but 
my sister unfortunately did, and her present state 
I believe to be entirely due to the shock it gave 
to her nerves. She never can be brought to refer 
to it, naturally, and I am even inclined to think 
that the memory has mercifully been permitted 
to vanish from her mind. But she spoke of it at 
the time as a face swept by flame — blasted.” 

John Silence looked up from his contemplation 
of the map, but with the air of one who wished 
to listen, not to speak, and presently Colonel 
Wragge went on with his account. He stood on 
the mat, his broad shoulders hiding most of the 
mantelpiece. 

“ They all centred about this particular plantation, 
these stories. That was to be expected, for the 
people here are as superstitious as Irish peasantry, 
and though I made one or two examples among 
them to stop the foolish talk, it had no effect, and 
new versions came to my ears every week. You 
may imagine how little good dismissals did, when I 
tell you that the servants dismissed themselves. It 
was not the house servants, but the men who 
worked on the estate outside. The keepers gave 
notice one after another, none of them with any 
reason I could accept; the foresters refused to 
enter the wood, and the beaters to beat in it. 
Word flew all over the countryside that Twelve 
ii 


162 


JOHN SILENCE 


Acre Plantation was a place to be avoided, day 
or night. 

“ There came a point,” the Colonel went on, now 
well in his swing, “ when I felt compelled to make 
investigations on my own account. I could not 
kill the thing by ignoring it ; so I collected and 
analysed the stories at first hand. For this Twelve 
Acre Wood, you will see by the map, comes rather 
near home. Its lower end, if you will look, almost 
touches the end of the back lawn, as I will show 
you tomorrow, and its dense growth of pines forms 
the chief protection the house enjoys from the east 
winds that blow up from the sea. And in olden days, 
before my brother interfered with it and frightened 
all the game away, it was one of the best pheasant 
coverts on the whole estate.” 

“And what form, if I may ask, did this inter- 
ference take ? ” asked Dr. Silence. 

“In detail, I cannot tell you, for I do not know 
— except that I understand it was the subject of 
his frequent differences with the head keeper; but 
during the last two years of his life, when he gave 
up travelling and settled down here, he took a 
special interest in this wood, and for some unac- 
countable reason began to build a low stone wall 
round it. This wall was never finished, but you 
shall see the ruins tomorrow in the daylight.” 

“And the result of your investigations — these 
stories, I mean?” the doctor broke in, anxious to 
keep him to the main issues. 

“Yes, I’m coming to that,” he said slowly, “but 
the wood first, for this wood out of which they 
grew like mushrooms has nothing in any way 
peculiar about it. It is very thickly grown, and 


THE NEMESIS OF FIRE 163. 

rises to a clearer part in the centre, a sort of 
mound where there is a circle of large boulders 
— old Druid stones, I’m told. At another place 
there’s a small pond. There’s nothing distinctive 
about it that I could mention — just an ordinary 
pine-wood, a very ordinary pine-wood — only the 
trees are a bit twisted in the trunks, some of ’em, 
and very dense. Nothing more. 

“And the stories? Well, none of them had 
anything to do with my poor brother, or the keeper, 
as you might have expected ; and they were all 
odd — such odd things, I mean, to invent or imagine. 
I never could make out how these people got such 
notions into their heads.” 

He paused a moment to relight his cigar. 

“ There’s no regular path through it,” he resumed, 
puffing vigorously, “ but the fields round it are con- 
stantly used, and one of the gardeners whose cottage 
lies over that way declared he often saw moving 
lights in it at night, and luminous shapes like globes 
of fire over the tops of the trees, skimming and float- 
ing, and making a soft hissing sound — most of ’em 
said that, in fact — and another man saw shapes 
flitting in and out among the trees, things that were 
neither men nor animals, and all faintly luminous. 
No one ever pretended to see human forms — always 
queer, huge things they could not properly describe. 
Sometimes the whole wood was lit up, and one 
fellow — he’s still here and you shall see him — has 
a most circumstantial yarn about having seen great 
stars lying on the ground round the edge of the 
wood at regular intervals ” 

“ What kind of stars ? ” put in John Silence sharply, 
in a sudden way that made me start. 


1 64 


JOHN SILENCE 


“ Oh, I don’t know quite ; ordinary stars, I think 
he said, only very large, and apparently blazing as 
though the ground was alight. He was too terrified 
to go close and examine, and he has never seen them 
since.” 

He stooped and stirred the fire into a welcome 
blaze — welcome for its blaze of light rather than for 
its heat. In the room there was already a strange 
pervading sensation of warmth that was oppressive 
in its effect and far from comforting. 

“Of course,” he went on, straightening up again 
on the mat, “this was all commonplace enough — 
this seeing lights and figures at night. Most of 
these fellows drink, and imagination and terror 
between them may account for almost anything. 
But others saw things in broad daylight. One of 
the woodmen, a sober, respectable man, took the 
shortcut home to his midday meal, and swore he 
was followed the whole length of the wood by 
something that never showed itself, but dodged from 
tree to tree, always keeping out of sight, yet solid 
enough to make the branches sway and the twigs 
snap on the ground. And it made a noise, he de- 
clared — but really” — the speaker stopped and gave 
a short laugh — “ it’s too absurd ” 

“ Please l” insisted the doctor ; “ for it is these small 
details that give me the best clues always.” 

“ it made a crackling noise, he said, like a 

bonfire. Those were his very words : like the crack- 
ling of a bonfire,” finished the soldier, with a repeti- 
tion of his short laugh. 

“ Most interesting,” Dr. Silence observed gravely. 
“ Please omit nothing.” 

“ Yes ” he went on, “ and it was soon after that the 


THE NEMESIS OF FIRE 165 

fires began — the fires in the wood. They started 
mysteriously burning in the patches of coarse white 
grass that cover the more open parts of the planta- 
tion. No one ever actually saw them start, but 
many, myself among the number, have seen them 
burning and smouldering. They are always small 
and circular in shape, and for all the world like a 
picnic fire. The head keeper has a dozen explana- 
tions, from sparks flying out of the house chimneys 
to the sunlight focusing through a dewdrop, but 
none of them, I must admit, convince me as being 
in the least likely or probable. They are most 
singular, I consider, most singular, these mysterious 
fires, and I am glad to say that they come only at 
rather long intervals and never seem to spread. 

“But the keeper had other queer stories as well, 
and about things that are verifiable. He declared 
that no life ever willingly entered the plantation ; 
more, that no life existed in it at all. No birds 
nested in the trees, or flew into their shade. He set 
countless traps, but never caught so much as a rabbit 
or a weasel. Animals avoided it, and more than 
once he had picked up dead creatures round the 
edges that bore no obvious signs of how they had 
met their death. 

“ Moreover, he told me one extraordinary tale 
about his retriever chasing some invisible creature 
across the field one day when he was out with his 
gun. The dog suddenly pointed at something in 
the field at his feet, and then gave chase, yelping 
like a mad thing. It followed its imaginary quarry 
to the borders of the wood, and then went in — a 
thing he had never known it to do before. The 
moment it crossed the edge — it is darkish in there 


JOHN SILENCE 


1 66 

even in daylight — it began fighting in the most 
frenzied and terrific fashion. It made him afraid to 
interfere, he said. And at last, when the dog came 
out, hanging its tail down and panting, he found 
something like white hair stuck to its jaws, and 
brought it to show me. I tell you these details 
because ” 

“ They are important, believe me,” the doctor 
stopped him. “And you have it still, this hair?” 
he asked. 

“It disappeared in the oddest way,” the Colonel 
explained. “ It was curious looking stuff, something 
like asbestos, and I sent it to be analysed by the 
local chemist. But either the man got wind of its 
origin, or else he didn’t like the look of it for some 
reason, because he returned it to me and said it was 
neither animal, vegetable, nor mineral, so far as he 
could make out, and he didn’t wish to have anything 
to do with it. I put it away in paper, but a week 
later, on opening the package — it was gone! Oh, 
the stories are simply endless. I could tell you 
hundreds all on the same lines.” 

“ And personal experiences ot your own, Colonel 
Wragge?” asked John Silence earnestly, his manner 
showing the greatest possible interest and sympathy. 

The soldier gave an almost imperceptible start. 
He looked distinctly uncomfortable. 

“ Nothing, I think,” he said slowly, “ nothing — er 
— I should like to rely on. I mean nothing I have 
the right to speak of, perhaps — yet.” 

His mouth closed with a snap. Dr. Silence, after 
waiting a little to see if he would add to his reply, 
did not seek to press him on the point. 

“ Well,” he resumed presently, and as though he 


THE NEMESIS OF FIRE 


167 


would speak contemptuously, yet dared not, “this 
sort of thing has gone on at intervals ever since. It 
spreads like wildfire, of course, mysterious chatter 
of this kind, and people began trespassing all over 
the estate, coming to see the wood, and making 
themselves a general nuisance. Notices of man-traps 
and spring-guns only seemed to increase their per- 
sistence ; and — think of it,” he snorted, “some local 
Research Society actually wrote and asked per- 
mission for one of their members to spend a night 
in the wood ! Bolder fools, who didn’t write for 
leave, came and took away bits of bark from the 
trees and gave them to clairvoyants, who invented 
in their turn a further batch of tales. There was 
simply no end to it all.” 

“ Most distressing and annoying, I can well 
believe,” interposed the doctor. 

“Then suddenly the phenomena ceased as mysteri- 
ously as they had begun, and the interest flagged. 
The tales stopped. People got interested in some- 
thing else. It all seemed to die out This was last 
July. I can tell you exactly, for I’ve kept a diary 
more or less of what happened.” 

“ Ah!” 

“ But now, quite recently, within the past three 
weeks, it has all revived again with a rush — with a kind 
of furious attack, so to speak. It has really become 
unbearable. You may imagine what it means, and 
the general state of affairs, when I say that the 
possibility of leaving has occurred to me.” 

“ Incendiarism?” suggested Dr. Silence, half under 
his breath, but not so low that Colonel Wragge did 
not hear him. 

“By Jove, sir, you take the very words out of my 


1 68 


JOHN SILENCE 


mouth ! ” exclaimed the astonished man, glancing 
from the doctor to me and from me to the doctor, and 
rattling the money in his pocket as though some 
explanation of my friend’s divining powers were to 
be found that way. 

“ It’s only that you are thinking very vividly,” the 
doctor said quietly, “ and your thoughts form pictures 
in my mind before you utter them. It’s merely a 
little elementary thought-reading.” 

His intention, I saw, was not to perplex the good 
man, but to impress him with his powers so as to 
ensure obedience later. 

“ Good Lord ! I had no idea ” He did not 

finish the sentence, and dived again abruptly into 
his narrative. 

“ I did not see anything myself, I must admit, but 
the stories of independent eye-witnesses were to the 
effect that lines of light, like streams of thin fire, 
moved through the wood and sometimes were seen 
to shoot out precisely as flames might shoot out — in 
the direction of this house. There,” he explained, 
in a louder voice that made me jump, pointing with 
a thick finger to the map, “ where the westerly fringe 
of the plantation comes up to the end of the lower 
lawn at the back of the house — where it links on to 
those dark patches, which are laurel shrubberies, 
running right up to the back premises — that’s where 
these lights were seen. They passed from the wood 
to the shrubberies, and in this way reached the house 
itself. Like silent rockets, one man described them, 
rapid as lightning and exceedingly bright.” 

“And this evidence you spoke of? ” 

“They actually reached the sides of the house. 
They’ve left a mark of scorching on the walls — the 


THE NEMESIS OF FIRE 169 

walls of the laundry building at the other end. You 
shall see ’em tomorrow.” He pointed to the map 
to indicate the spot, and then straightened himself 
and glared about the room as though he had said 
something no one could believe and expected 
contradiction. 

“Scorched — just as the faces were,” the doctor 
murmured, looking significantly at me. 

“Scorched — yes,” repeated the Colonel, failing to 
catch the rest of the sentence in his excitement. 

There was a prolonged silence in the room, in 
which I heard the gurgling of the oil in the lamp and 
the click of the coals and the heavy breathing of our 
host. The most unwelcome sensations were creeping 
about my spine, and I wondered whether my com- 
panion would scorn me utterly if I asked to sleep on 
the sofa in his room. It was eleven o’clock, I saw 
by the clock on the mantelpiece. We had crossed 
the dividing line and were now well in the movement 
of the adventure. The fight between my interest 
and my dread became acute. But, even if turning 
back had been possible, I think the interest would 
have easily gained the day. 

“ I have enemies, of course,” I heard the Colonel’s 
rough voice break into the pause presently, “and 
have discharged a number of servants ” 

“ It’s not that,” put in John Silence briefly. 

“You think not? In a sense I am glad, and yet — 
there are some things that can be met and dealt 
with ” 

He left the sentence unfinished, and looked down 
at the floor with an expression of grim severity that 
betrayed a momentary glimpse ofcharacter. This fight- 
ing man loathed and abhorred the thought of an enemy 


170 


JOHN SILENCE 


he could not see and come to grips with. Presently he 
moved over and sat down in the chair between us. 
Something like a sigh escaped him. Dr. Silence 
said nothing. 

“ My sister, of course, is kept in ignorance, as far as 
possible, of all this,” he said disconnectedly, and as if 
talking to himself. “But even if she knew, she 
would find matter-of-fact explanations. I only wish 
I could. Pm sure they exist.” 

There came then an interval in the conversation that 
was very significant. It did not seem a real pause, 
or the silence real silence, for both men continued 
to think so rapidly and strongly that one almost 
imagined their thoughts clothed themselves in words 
in the air of the room. I was more than a little 
keyed up with the strange excitement of all I had 
heard, but what stimulated my nerves more than 
anything else was the obvious fact that the doctor 
was clearly upon the trail of discovery. In his mind 
at that moment, I believe, he had already solved the 
nature of this perplexing psychical problem. His 
face was like a mask, and he employed the absolute 
minimum of gesture and words. All his energies 
were directed inwards, and by those incalculable 
methods and processes he had mastered with such 
infinite patience and study, I felt sure he was already 
in touch with the forces behind these singular pheno- 
mena and laying his deep plans for bringing them 
into the open, and then effectively dealing with them. 

Colonel Wragge meanwhile grew more and more 
fidgety. From time to time he turned towards my 
companion, as though about to speak, yet always 
changing his mind at the last moment. Once he 
went over and opened the door suddenly, apparently 


THE NEMESIS OF FIRE 


171 


to see if any one were listening at the keyhole, for he 
disappeared a moment between the two doors, and 
I then heard him open the outer one. He stood 
there for some seconds and made a noise as though 
he were sniffing the air like a dog. Then he closed 
both doors cautiously and came back to the fire- 
place. A strange excitement seemed growing upon 
him. Evidently he was trying to make up his mind 
to say something that he found it difficult to say. 
And John Silence, as I rightly judged, was waiting 
patiently for him to choose his own opportunity and his 
own way of saying it. At last he turned and faced us, 
squaring his great shoulders, and stiffening perceptibly* 

Dr. Silence looked up sympathetically. 

“ Your own experiences help me most,” he observed 
quietly. 

“ The fact is,” the Colonel said, speaking very low, 
“ this past week there have been outbreaks of fire in 
the house itself. Three separate outbreaks — and all 
— in my sister’s room.” 

“ Yes,” the doctor said, as if this was just what he 
had expected to hear. 

“ Utterly unaccountable — all of them,” added the 
other, and then sat down. I began to understand 
something of the reason of his excitement. He 
was realising at last that the “ natural ” explanation 
he had held to all along was becoming impossible, 
and he hated it. It made him angry. 

“ Fortunately,” he went on, “ she was out each 
time and does not know. But I have made her 
sleep now in a room on the ground floor.” 

“ A wise precaution,” the doctor said simply. He 
asked one or two questions. The fires had started 
in the curtains — once by the window and once by 


172 


JOHN SILENCE 


the bed. The third time smoke had been discovered 
by the maid coming from the cupboard, and it was 
found that Miss Wragge’s clothes hanging on the 
hooks were smouldering. The doctor listened atten- 
tively, but made no comment. 

“And now can you tell me,” he said presently, 
“ what your own feeling about it is — your general 
impression ? ” 

“ It sounds foolish to say so,” replied the soldier, 
after a moment’s hesitation, “but I feel exactly as 
I have often felt on active service in my Indian 
campaigns : just as if the house and all in it were in 
a state of siege ; as though a concealed enemy were 
encamped about us — in ambush somewhere.” He 
uttered a soft nervous laugh. “ As if the next sign 
of smoke would precipitate a panic — a dreadful panic.” 

The picture came before me of the night shadow- 
ing the house, and the twisted pine trees he had 
described crowding about it, concealing some powerful 
enemy ; and, glancing at the resolute face and figure 
of the old soldier, forced at length to his confession, 
I understood something of all he had been through 
before he sought the assistance of John Silence. 

“And tomorrow, unless I am mistaken, is full 
moon,” said the doctor suddenly, watching the 
other’s face for the effect of his apparently careless 
words. 

Colonel Wragge gave an uncontrollable start, and 
his face for the first time showed unmistakable 
pallor. 

“ What in the world ? ” he began, his lip 

quivering. 

“ Only that I am beginning to see light in this 
extraordinary affair,” returned the other calmly, 


THE NEMESIS OF FIRE 


173 


“ and, if my theory is correct, each month when the 
moon is at the full should witness an increase in the 
activity of the phenomena.” 

“ I don’t see the connection,” Colonel Wragge 
answered almost savagely, “ but I am bound to say 
my diary bears you out.” He wore the most puzzled 
expression I have ever seen upon an honest face, 
but he abhorred this additional corroboration of an 
explanation that perplexed him. 

“ I confess,” he repeated, “ I cannot see the 
connection.” 

“ Why should you ? ” said the doctor, with his first 
laugh that evening. He got up and hung the map 
upon the wall again. “ But I do — because these 
things are my special study — and let me add that 
I have yet to come across a problem that is not 
natural, and has not a natural explanation. It’s 
merely a question of how much one knows — and 
admits.” 

Colonel Wragge eyed him with a new and curious 
respect in his face. But his feelings were soothed. 
Moreover, the doctor’s laugh and change of manner 
came as a relief to all, and broke the spell of 
grave suspense that had held us so long. We all 
rose and stretched our limbs, and took little walks 
about the room. 

“ I am glad, Dr. Silence, if you will allow me to 
say so, that you are here,” he said simply, “very 
glad indeed. And now I fear I have kept you both 
up very late,” with a glance to include me, “ for you 
must be tired, and ready for your beds. I have told 
you all there is to tell,” he added, “ and tomorrow 
you must feel perfectly free to take any steps you 
think necessary.” 


174 


JOHN SILENCE 


The end was abrupt, yet natural, for there was 
nothing more to say, and neither of these men talked 
for mere talking’s sake. 

Out in the cold and chilly hall he lit our candles 
and took us upstairs. The house was at rest and 
still, every one asleep. We moved softly. Through 
the windows on the stairs we saw the moonlight 
falling across the lawn, throwing deep shadows. The 
nearer pine trees were just visible in the distance, 
a wall of impenetrable blackness. 

Our host came for a moment to our rooms to see 
that we had everything. He pointed to a coil of 
strong rope lying beside the window, fastened to 
the wall by means of an iron ring. Evidently it had 
been recently put in. 

“ I don’t think we shall need it,” Dr. Silence said, 
with a smile. 

“ I trust not,” replied our host gravely. “ I sleep 
quite close to you across the landing,” he whispered, 
pointing to his door, " and if you — if you want any- 
thing in the night you will know where to find 
me.” 

He wished us pleasant dreams and disappeared 
down the passage into his room, shading the candle 
with his big muscular hand from the draughts. 

John Silence stopped me a moment before I 
went. 

“You know what it is?” I asked, with an excite- 
ment that even overcame my weariness. 

“ Yes,” he said, “ I’m almost sure. And you ? ” 

“ Not the smallest notion.” 

He looked disappointed, but not half as dis- 
appointed as I felt. 

“ Egypt,” he whispered, “ Egypt ! ” 


THE NEMESIS OF FIRE 


175 


II 

Nothing happened to disturb me in the night 
— nothing, that is, except a nightmare in which 
Colonel Wragge chased me amid thin streaks of 
fire, and his sister always prevented my escape by 
suddenly rising up out of the ground in her chair — 
dead. The deep baying of dogs woke me once, just 
before the dawn, it must have been, for I saw the 
window frame against the sky; there was a flash 
of lightning, too, I thought, as I turned over in 
bed. And it was warm, for October oppressively 
warm. 

It was after eleven o’clock when our host 
suggested going out with the guns, these, we under- 
stood, being a somewhat thin disguise for our true 
purpose. Personally, I was glad to be in the open 
air, for the atmosphere of the house was heavy with 
presentiment. The sense of impending disaster hung 
over all. Fear stalked the passages, and lurked in 
the corners of every room. It was a house haunted, 
but really haunted ; not by some vague shadow of the 
dead, but by a definite though incalculable influence 
that was actively alive, and dangerous. At the least 
smell of smoke the entire household quivered. An 
odour of burning, I was convinced, would paralyse all 
the inmates. For the servants, though professedly 
ignorant by the master’s unspoken orders, yet shared 
the common dread ; and the hideous uncertainty, 
joined with this display of so spiteful and calculated 
a spirit of malignity, provided a kind of black doom 
that draped not only the walls, but also the minds 
of the people living within them. 


1 76 


JOHN SILENCE 


Only the bright and cheerful vision of old Miss 
Wragge being pushed about the house in her 
noiseless chair, chatting and nodding briskly to 
every one she met, prevented us from giving way 
entirely to the depression which governed the 
majority. The sight of her was like a gleam of 
sunshine through the depths of some ill-omened 
wood, and just as we went out I saw her being 
wheeled along by her attendant into the sunshine of 
the back lawn, and caught her cheery smile as she 
turned her head and wished us good sport. 

The morning was October at its best. Sunshine 
glistened on the dew-drenched grass and on leaves 
turned golden - red. The dainty messengers of 
coming hoar-frost were already in the air, asearch 
for permanent winter quarters. From the wide 
moors that everywhere swept up against the sky, 
like a purple sea splashed by the occasional grey of 
rocky clefts, there stole down the cool and perfumed 
wind of the west. And the keen taste of the sea 
ran through all like a master-flavour, borne over the 
spaces perhaps by the seagulls that cried and circled 
high in the air. 

But our host took little interest in this sparkling 
beauty, and had no thought of showing off the 
scenery of his property. His mind was otherwise 
intent, and, for that matter, so were our own. 

‘'Those bleak moors and hills stretch unbroken 
for hours,” he said, with a sweep of the hand ; “ and 
over there, some four miles,” pointing in another 

direction, “lies S Bay, a long, swampy inlet of 

the sea, haunted by myriads of seabirds. On the 
other side of the house are the plantations and pine- 
woods. I thought we would get the dogs and go 


THE NEMESIS OF FIRE 


1 77 

first to the Twelve Acre Wood I told you about last 
night. It’s quite near” 

We found the dogs in the stable, and I recalled 
the deep baying of the night when a fine bloodhound 
and two great Danes leaped out to greet us. Singu- 
lar companions for guns, I thought to myself, as we 
struck out across the fields and the great creatures 
bounded and ran beside us, nose to ground. 

The conversation was scanty. John Silence’s grave 
face did not encourage talk. He wore the expression 
I knew well — that look of earnest solicitude which 
meant that his whole being was deeply absorbed 
and preoccupied. Frightened, I had never seen him, 
but anxious often — it always moved me to witness it 
— and he was anxious now. 

“On the way back you shall see the laundry 
building,” Colonel Wragge observed shortly, for he, 
too, found little to say. “We shall attract less 
attention then.” 

Yet not all the crisp beauty of the morning seemed 
able to dispel the feelings of uneasy dread that 
gathered increasingly about our minds as we went. 

In a very few minutes a clump of pine trees 
concealed the house from view, and we found 
ourselves on the outskirts of a densely-grown planta- 
tion of conifers. Colonel Wragge stopped abruptly, 
and, producing a map from his pocket, explained 
once more very briefly its position with regard to the 
house. He showed how it ran up almost to the 
walls of the laundry building — though at the moment 
beyond our actual view — and pointed to the windows 
of his sister’s bedroom where the fires had been. 
The room, now empty, looked straight on to the 
wood. Then, glancing nervously about him, and 


12 


i;8 


JOHN SILENCE 


calling the dogs to heel, he proposed that we should 
enter the plantation and make as thorough examina- 
tion of it as we thought worth while. The dogs, he 
added, might perhaps be persuaded to accompany 
us a little way — and he pointed to where they 
cowered at his feet — but he doubted it. “Neither 
voice nor whip will get them very far, I’m afraid,” he 
said. “ I know by experience.” 

“ If you have no objection,” replied Dr. Silence, 
with decision, and speaking almost for the first time, 
“ we will make our examination alone — Mr. Hubbard 
and myself. It will be best so.” 

His tone was absolutely final, and the Colonel 
acquiesced so politely that even a less intuitive man 
than myself must have seen that he was genuinely 
relieved. 

“You doubtless have good reasons,” he said. 

“Merely that I wish to obtain my impressions 
uncoloured. This delicate clue I am working on might 
be so easily blurred by the thought-currents of 
another mind with strongly preconceived ideas.” 

“Perfectly. I understand,” rejoined the soldier, 
though with an expression of countenance that 
plainly contradicted his words. “Then I will wait 
here with the dogs ; and we’ll have a look at the 
laundry on our way home.” 

I turned once to look back as we clambered over 
the low stone wall built by the late owner, and saw 
his straight, soldierly figure standing in the sunlit 
field watching us with a curiously intent look on his 
face. There was something to me incongruous, yet 
distinctly pathetic, in the man’s efforts to meet all 
far-fetched explanations of the mystery with con- 
tempt, and at the same time in his stolid, unswerving 


THE NEMESIS OF FIRE 


179 


investigation of it all. He nodded at me and made 
a gesture of farewell with his hand. That picture of 
him, standing in the sunshine with his big dogs, 
steadily watching us, remains with me to this 
day. 

Dr. Silence led the way in among the twisted 
trunks, planted closely together in serried ranks, 
and I followed sharp at his heels. The moment we 
were out of sight he turned and put down his 
gun against the roots of a big tree, and I did like- 
wise. 

“We shall hardly want these cumbersome weapons 
of murder,” he observed, with a passing smile. 

“You are sure of your clue, then?” I asked at 
once, bursting with curiosity, yet fearing to betray it 
lest he should think me unworthy. His own methods 
were so absolutely simple and untheatrical. 

“ I am sure of my clue,” he answered gravely. 
“And I think we have come just in time. You 
shall know in due course. For the present — be 
content to follow and observe. And think steadily. 
The support of your mind will help me.” 

His voice had that quiet mastery in it which 
leads men to face death with a sort of happiness and 
pride. I would have followed him anywhere at that 
moment. At the same time his words conveyed a 
sense of dread seriousness. I caught the thrill of his 
confidence; but also, in this broad light of day, I 
felt the measure of alarm that lay behind. 

“You still have no strong impressions?” he asked. 
“ Nothing happened in the night, for instance? No 
vivid dreamings?” 

He looked closely for my answer, I was aware. 

“ I slept almost an unbroken sleep. I was 


i8o 


JOHN SILENCE 


tremendously tired, you know, and, but for the 
oppressive heat ” 

“Good! You still notice the heat, then,” he said 
to himself, rather than expecting an answer. “ And 
the lightning?” he added, “ that lightning out of a 
clear sky — that flashing — did you notice that?” 

I answered truly that I thought I had seen a 
flash during a moment of wakefulness, and he then 
drew my attention to certain facts before moving 
on. 

“You remember the sensation of warmth when 
you put the letter to your forehead in the train ; 
the heat generally in the house last evening, and, 
as you now mention, in the night. You heard, too, 
the Colonel’s stories about the appearances of fire in 
this wood and in the house itself, and the way his 
brother and the gamekeeper came to their deaths 
twenty years ago.” 

I nodded, wondering what in the world it all 
meant. 

“And you get no clue from these facts?” he 
asked, a trifle surprised. 

I searched every corner of my mind and imagina- 
tion for some inkling of his meaning, but was 
obliged to admit that I understood nothing so far. 

“Never mind; you will later. And now,” he 
added, “we will go over the wood and see what 
we can find.” 

His words explained to me something of his 
method. We were to keep our minds alert and 
report to each other the least fancy that crossed 
the picture-gallery of our thoughts. Then, just as 
we started, he turned again to me with a final 
warning. 


THE NEMESIS OF FIRE 181 

“ And, for your safety,” he said earnestly, “ imagine 
now — and for that matter, imagine always until we 
leave this place — imagine with the utmost keenness, 
that you are surrounded by a shell that protects 
you. Picture yourself inside a protective envelope, 
and build it up with the most intense imagination 
you can evoke. Pour the whole force of your 
thought and will into it. Believe vividly all through 
this adventure that such a shell, constructed of your 
thought, will and imagination, surrounds you com- 
pletely, and that nothing can pierce it to attack.” 

He spoke with dramatic conviction, gazing hard 
at me as though to enforce his meaning, and then 
moved forward and began to pick his way over the 
rough, tussocky ground into the wood. And mean- 
while, knowing the efficacy of his prescription, I 
adopted it to the best of my ability. 

The trees at once closed about us like the night. 
Their branches met overhead in a continuous tangle, 
their stems crept closer and closer, the brambly 
undergrowth thickened and multiplied. We tore 
our trousers, scratched our hands, and our eyes 
filled with fine dust that made it most difficult to 
avoid the clinging, prickly network of branches 
and creepers. Coarse white grass that caught our 
feet like string grew here and there in patches. It 
crowned the lumps of peaty growth that stuck up 
like human heads, fantastically dressed, thrusting up 
at us out of the ground with crests of dead hair. 
We stumbled and floundered among them. It was 
hard going, and I could well conceive it impossible 
to find a way at all in the night-time. We jumped, 
when possible, from tussock to tussock, and it seemed 
as though we were springing among heads on a 


182 


JOHN SILENCE 


battlefield, and that this dead white grass concealed 
eyes that turned to stare as we passed. 

Here and there the sunlight shot in with vivid 
spots of white light, dazzling the sight, but only 
making the surrounding gloom deeper by contrast. 
And on two occasions we passed dark circular places 
in the grass where fires had eaten their mark and 
left a ring of ashes. Dr. Silence pointed to them, 
but without comment and without pausing, and the 
sight of them woke in me a singular realisation of 
the dread that lay so far only just out of sight in 
this adventure. 

It was exhausting work, and heavy going. We 
kept close together. The warmth, too, was extra- 
ordinary. Yet it did not seem the warmth of the 
body due to violent exertion, but rather an inner 
heat of the mind that laid glowing hands of fire 
upon the heart and set the brain in a kind of 
steady blaze. When my companion found himself 
too far in advance, he waited for me to come up. 
The place had evidently been untouched by hand 
of man, keeper, forester or sportsman, for many a 
year; and my thoughts, as we advanced painfully, 
were not unlike the state of the wood itself — dark, 
confused, full of a haunting wonder and the shadow 
of fear. 

By this time all signs of the open field behind us 
were hid. No single gleam penetrated. We might 
have been groping in the heart of some primeval 
forest. Then, suddenly, the brambles and tussocks 
and string-like grass came to an end ; the trees 
opened out ; and the ground began to slope upwards 
towards a large central mound. We had reached 
the middle of the plantation, and before us stood 


THE NEMESIS OF FIRE 


183 

the broken Druid stones our host had mentioned. 
We walked easily up the little hill, between the 
sparser stems, and, resting upon one of the ivy- 
covered boulders, looked round upon a comparatively 
open space, as large, perhaps, as a small London 
Square. 

Thinking of the ceremonies and sacrifices this 
rough circle of prehistoric monoliths might have 
witnessed, I looked up into my companion’s face 
with an unspoken question. But he read my 
thought and shook his head. 

“ Our mystery has nothing to do with these dead 
symbols,” he said, “ but with something perhaps even 
more ancient, and of another country altogether.” 

“ Egypt ? ” I said half under my breath, hopelessly 
puzzled, but recalling his words in my bedroom. 

He nodded. Mentally I still floundered, but he 
seemed intensely preoccupied and it was no time 
for asking questions; so while his words circled 
unintelligibly in my mind I looked round at the 
scene before me, glad of the opportunity to recover 
breath and some measure of composure. But hardly 
had I time to notice the twisted and contorted shapes 
of many of the pine trees close at hand when Dr. 
Silence leaned over and touched me on the shoulder. 
He pointed down the slope. And the look I saw in 
his eyes keyed up every nerve in my body to its 
utmost pitch. 

A thin, almost imperceptible column of blue smoke 
was rising among the trees some twenty yards away 
at the foot of the mound. It curled up and up, 
and disappeared from sight among the tangled 
branches overhead. It was scarcely thicker than 
the smoke from a small brand of burning wood. 


JOHN SILENCE 


184 

“ Protect yourself ! Imagine your shell strongly,” 
whispered the doctor sharply, “ and follow me 
closely” 

He rose at once and moved swiftly down the 
slope towards the smoke, and I followed, afraid to 
remain alone. I heard the soft crunching of our 
steps on the pine needles. Over his shoulder I 
watched the thin blue spiral, without once taking my 
eyes off it. I hardly know how to describe the 
peculiar sense of vague horror inspired in me by the 
sight of that streak of smoke pencilling its way 
upwards among the dark trees. And the sensation 
of increasing heat as we approached was phenomenal. 
It was like walking towards a glowing yet invisible 
fire. 

As we drew nearer his pace slackened. Then he 
stopped and pointed, and I saw a small circle of 
burnt grass upon the ground. The tussocks were 
blackened and smouldering, and from the centre rose 
this line of smoke, pale, blue, steady. Then I 
noticed a movement of the atmosphere beside us, as 
if the warm air were rising and the cooler air rushing 
in to take its place : a little centre of wind in the 
stillness. Overhead the boughs stirred and trembled 
where the smoke disappeared. Otherwise, not a 
tree sighed, not a sound made itself heard. The 
wood was still as a graveyard. A horrible idea came 
to me that the course of nature was about to change 
without warning, had changed a little already, that 
the sky would drop, or the surface of the earth crash 
inwards like a broken bubble. Something, certainly, 
reached up to the citadel of my reason, causing its 
throne to shake. 

John Silence moved forward again. I could not see 


THE NEMESIS OF FIRE 


185 


his face, but his attitude was plainly one of resolution, 
of muscles and mind ready for vigorous action. We 
were within ten feet of the blackened circle when the 
smoke of a sudden ceased to rise, and vanished. 
The tail of the column disappeared in the air above, 
and at the same instant it seemed to me that 
the sensation of heat passed from my face, and the 
motion of the wind was gone. The calm spirit of the 
fresh October day resumed command. 

Side by side we advanced and examined the place. 
The grass was smouldering, the ground still hot. 
The circle of burned earth was a foot to a foot and 
a half in diameter. It looked like an ordinary picnic 
fire-place. I bent down cautiously to look, but in a 
second I sprang back with an involuntary cry of 
alarm, for, as the doctor stamped on the ashes to 
prevent them spreading, a sound of hissing rose from 
the spot as though he had kicked a living creature. 
This hissing was faintly audible in the air. It moved 
past us, away towards the thicker portion of the wood 
in the direction of our field, and in a second Dr. 
Silence had left the fire and started in pursuit. 

And then began the most extraordinary hunt of 
invisibility I can ever conceive. 

He went fast even at the beginning, and, of course, 
it was perfectly obvious that he was following 
something. To judge by the poise of his head he 
kept his eyes steadily at a certain level — just above 
the height of a man — and the consequence was he 
stumbled a good deal over the roughness of the 
ground. The hissing sound had stopped. There 
was no sound of any kind, and what he saw to follow 
was utterly beyond me. I only know, that in mortal 
dread of being left behind, and with a biting curiosity 


1 86 


JOHN SILENCE 


to see whatever there was to be seen, I followed as 
quickly as I could, and even then barely succeeded in 
keeping up with him. 

And, as we went, the whole mad jumble of the 
Colonel’s stories ran through my brain, touching a 
sense of frightened laughter that was only held in 
check by the sight of this earnest, hurrying figure 
before me. For John Silence at work inspired me with 
a kind of awe. He looked so diminutive among these 
giant twisted trees, while yet I knew that his purpose 
and his knowledge were so great, and even in hurry he 
was dignified. The fancy that we were playing some 
queer, exaggerated game together met the fact that 
we were two men dancing upon the brink of some 
possible tragedy, and the mingling of the two 
emotions in my mind was both grotesque and 
terrifying. 

He never turned in his mad chase, but pushed 
rapidly on, while I panted after him like a figure 
in some unreasoning nightmare. And, as I ran, it 
came upon me that he had been aware all the 
time, in his quiet, internal way, of many things that 
he had kept for his own secret consideration ; he had 
been watching, waiting, planning from the very 
moment we entered the shade of the wood. By some 
inner, concentrated process of mind, dynamic if 
not actually magical, he had been in direct contact 
with the source of the whole adventure, the 
very essence of the real mystery. And now 
the forces were moving to a climax. Something 
was about to happen, something important, some- 
thing possibly dreadful. Every nerve, every sense, 
every significant gesture of the plunging figure before 
me proclaimed the fact just as surely as the skies, 


THE NEMESIS OF FIRE 


187 


the winds, and the face of the earth tell the 
birds the time to migrate and warn the animals 
that danger lurks and they must move. 

In a few moments we reached the foot of the 
mound and entered the tangled undergrowth that lay 
between us and the sunlight of the field. Here the 
difficulties of fast travelling increased a hundredfold. 
There were brambles to dodge, low boughs to dive 
under, and countless tree trunks closing up to make 
a direct path impossible. Yet Dr. Silence never 
seemed to falter or hesitate. He went, diving, 
jumping, dodging, ducking, but ever in the same 
main direction, following a clean trail. Twice I 
tripped and fell, and both times, when I picked 
myself up again, I saw him ahead of me, still 
forcing a way like a dog after its quarry. And 
sometimes, like a dog, he stopped and pointed — 
human pointing it was, psychic pointing, — and each 
time he stopped to point I heard that faint high 
hissing in the air beyond us. The instinct of an 
infallible dowser possessed him, and he made no 
mistakes. 

At length, abruptly, I caught up with him, and 
found that we stood at the edge of the shallow pond 
Colonel Wragge had mentioned in his account the 
night before. It was long and narrow, filled with 
dark brown water, in which the trees were dimly 
reflected. Not a ripple stirred its surface. 

“ Watch ! ” he cried out, as I came up. “ It’s 
going to cross. It’s bound to betray itself. The 
water is its natural enemy, and we shall see the 
direction.” 

And, even as he spoke, a thin line like the track of 
a water-spider, shot swiftly across the shiny surface ; 


1 88 


JOHN SILENCE 


there was a ghost of steam in the air above; 
and immediately I became aware of an odour of 
burning. 

Dr. Silence turned and shot a glance at me that 
made me think of lightning. I began to shake all 
over. 

“ Quick ! ” he cried with excitement, “ to the trail 
again ! We must run round. It’s going to the 
house ! ” 

The alarm in his voice quite terrified me. Without 
a false step I dashed round the slippery banks and 
dived again at his heels into the sea of bushes and 
tree trunks. We were now in the thick of the very 
dense belt that ran round the outer edge of the planta- 
tion, and the field was near; yet so dark was the 
tangle that it was some time before the first shafts 
of white sunlight became visible. The doctor now 
ran in zigzags. He was following something that 
dodged and doubled quite wonderfully, yet had 
begun, I fancied, to move more slowly than 
before. 

“Quick!” he cried. “In the light we shall lose 
it!” 

I still saw nothing, heard nothing, caught no 
suggestion of a trail ; yet this man, guided by some 
interior divining that seemed infallible, made no false 
turns, though how we failed to crash headlong into 
the trees has remained a mystery to me ever since. 
And then, with a sudden rush, we found ourselves on 
the skirts of the wood with the open field lying in 
bright sunshine before our eyes. 

“ Too late ! ” I heard him cry, a note of anguish in 
his voice. “ Its out — and, by God, it’s making for the 
house ! ” 


THE NEMESIS OF FIRE 


189 


I saw the Colonel standing in the field with his 
dogs where we had left him. He was bending double, 
peering into the wood where he heard us running, and 
he straightened up like a bent whip released. John 
Silence dashed passed, calling him to follow. 

“ We shall lose the trail in the light,” I heard him 
cry as he ran. “ But quick ! We may yet get there 
in time ! ” 

That wild rush across the open field, with the 
dogs at our heels, leaping and barking, and the 
elderly Colonel behind us running as though for 
his life, shall I ever forget it? Though I had only 
vague ideas of the meaning of it all, I put my best 
foot forward, and, being the youngest of the three, 
I reached the house an easy first. I drew up, 
panting, and turned to wait for the others. But, as 
I turned, something moving a little distance away 
caught my eye, and in that moment I swear I 
experienced the most overwhelming and singular 
shock of surprise and terror I have ever known, or 
can conceive as possible. 

For the front door was open, and the waist of the 
house being narrow, I could see through the hall 
into the dining-room beyond, and so out on to the 
back lawn, and there I saw no less a sight than the 
figure of Miss Wragge — running. Even at that 
distance it was plain that she had seen me, and 
was coming fast towards me, running with the 
frantic gait of a terror-stricken woman. She had 
recovered the use of her legs. 

Her face was a livid grey, as of death itself, but 
the general expression was one of laughter, for her 
mouth was gaping, and her eyes, always bright 
shone with the light of a wild merriment that 


JOHN SILENCE 


190 

seemed the merriment of a child, yet was singularly 
ghastly. And that very second, as she fled past me 
into her brother’s arms behind, I smelt again most 
unmistakably the odour of burning, and to this day 
the smell of smoke and fire can come very near to 
turning me sick with the memory of what I had 
seen. 

Fast on her heels, too, came the terrified attendant, 
more mistress of herself, and able to speak — which 
the old lady could not do — but with a face almost, 
if not quite, as fearful. 

“ We were down by the bushes in the sun,” — she 
gasped and screamed in reply to Colonel Wragge’s 
distracted questionings, — “I was wheeling the 
chair as usual when she shrieked and leaped — I 
don’t know exactly — I was too frightened to see — 
Oh, my God ! she jumped clean out of the chair — 
and ran ! There was a blast of hot air from the 
wood, and she hid her face and jumped. She didn’t 
make a sound — she didn’t cry out, or make a sound. 
She just ran.” 

But the nightmare horror of it all reached the 
breaking point a few minutes later, and while I was 
still standing in the hall temporarily bereft of speech 
and movement ; for while the doctor, the Colonel and 
the attendant were half-way up the staircase, helping 
the fainting woman to the privacy of her room, and 
all in a confused group of dark figures, there sounded 
a voice behind me, and I turned to see the butler, his 
face dripping with perspiration, his eyes starting out 
of his head. 

“ The laundry’s on fire ! ” he cried ; “ the laundry 
building’s a-caught ! ” 

I remember his odd expression “a-caught,” and 


THE NEMESIS OF FIRE 


191 

wanting to laugh, but finding my face rigid and 
inflexible. 

“ The devil’s about again, s’help me Gawd!” he cried, 
in a voice thin with terror, running about in circles. 

And then the group on the stairs scattered as at 
the sound of a shot, and the Colonel and Dr. Silence 
came down three steps at a time, leaving the afflicted 
Miss Wragge to the care of her single attendant. 

We were out across the front lawn in a moment 
and round the corner of the house, the Colonel leading, 
Silence and I at his heels, and the portly butler puffing 
some distance in the rear, getting more and more 
mixed in his addresses to God and the devil ; and 
the moment we passed the stables and came into 
view of the laundry building, we saw a wicked- 
looking volume of smoke pouring out of the narrow 
windows, and the frightened women-servants and 
grooms running hither and thither, calling aloud as 
they ran. 

The arrival of the master restored order instantly, 
and this retired soldier, poor thinker perhaps, but 
capable man of action, had the matter in hand from 
the start. He issued orders like a martinet, and, 
almost before I could realise it, there were streaming 
buckets on the scene and a line of men and women 
formed between the building and the stable pump. 

“ Inside,” I heard John Silence cry, and the Colonel 
followed him through the door, while I was just quick 
enough at their heels to hear him add, “ the smoke’s 
the worst part of it. There’s no fire yet, I think.” 

And, true enough, there was no fire. The interior 
was thick with smoke, but it speedily cleared and 
not a single bucket was used upon the floor or walls. 
The air was stifling, the heat fearful. 


192 


JOHN SILENCE 


“There’s precious little to burn in here; it’s all 
stone,” the Colonel exclaimed, coughing. But the 
doctor was pointing to the wooden covers of the 
great cauldron in which the clothes were washed, 
and we saw that these were smouldering and charred. 
And when we sprinkled half a bucket of water on 
them the surrounding bricks hissed and fizzed and 
sent up clouds of steam. Through the open door 
and windows this passed out with the rest of the 
smoke, and we three stood there on the brick floor 
staring at the spot and wondering, each in our own 
fashion, how in the name of natural law the place 
could have caught fire or smoked at all. And each 
was silent — myself from sheer incapacity and be- 
fuddlement, the Colonel from the quiet pluck that 
faces all things yet speaks little, and John Silence 
from the intense mental grappling with this latest 
manifestation of a profound problem that called for 
concentration of thought rather than for any words. 

There was really nothing to say. The facts were 
indisputable. 

Colonel Wragge was the first to utter. 

“ My sister,” he said briefly, and moved off. In the 
yard I heard him sending the frightened servants 
about their business in an excellently matter-of-fact 
voice, scolding some one roundly for making such a 
big fire and letting the flues get over-heated, and 
paying no heed to the stammering reply that no fire 
had been lit there for several days. Then he dis- 
patched a groom on horseback for the local doctor. 

Then Dr. Silence turned and looked at me. The 
absolute control he possessed, not only over the 
outward expression of emotion by gesture, change of 
colour, light in the eyes, and so forth, but also, as I 


THE NEMESIS OF FIRE 


193 


well knew, over its very birth in his heart, the mask- 
like face of the dead he could assume at will, made 
it extremely difficult to know at any given moment 
what was at work in his inner consciousness. But 
now, when he turned and looked at me, there was 
no sphinx-expression there, but rather the keen, 
triumphant face of a man who had solved a 
dangerous and complicated problem, and saw his 
way to a clean victory. 

“ Now do you guess ? ” he asked quietly, as though it 
were the simplest matter in the world, and ignorance 
were impossible. 

I could only stare stupidly and remain silent. 
He glanced down at the charred cauldron-lids, and 
traced a figure in the air with his finger. But I was 
too excited, or too mortified, or still too dazed, 
perhaps, to see what it was he outlined, or what it 
was he meant to convey. I could only go on staring 
and shaking my puzzled head. 

“ A fire-elemental,” he cried, “ a fire-elemental 
of the most powerful and malignant kind ” 

“ A what ? ” thundered the voice of Colonel 
Wragge behind us, having returned suddenly and 
overheard. 

“ It’s a fire-elemental,” repeated Dr. Silence more 
calmly, but with a note of triumph in his voice 
he could not keep out, “and a fire-elemental 
enraged.” 

The light began to dawn in my mind at last. 
But the Colonel — who had never heard the term 
before, and was besides feeling considerably worked- 
up for a plain man with all this mystery he knew not 
how to grapple with — the Colonel stood, with the 
most dumfoundered look ever seen on a human 

13 


194 


JOHN SILENCE 


countenance, and continued to roar, and stammer, 
and stare. 

“And why,” he began, savage with the desire 
to find something visible he could fight — “ why, in the 

name of all the blazes ?” and then stopped as 

John Silence moved up and took his arm. 

“There, my dear Colonel Wragge,” he said gently, 
“you touch the heart of the whole thing. You 
ask ‘Why/ That is precisely our problem.” He 
held the soldier’s eyes firmly with his own. “And 
that, too, I think, we shall soon know. Come and let 
us talk over a plan of action — that room with the 
double doors, perhaps.” 

The word “ action ” calmed him a little, and he led 
the way, without further speech, back into the house, 
and down the long stone passage to the room where 
we had heard his stories on the night of our arrival. 
I understood from the doctor’s glance that my 
presence would not make the interview easier for 
our host, and I went upstairs to my own room — 
shaking. 

But in the solitude of my room the vivid memories 
of the last hour revived so mercilessly that I began 
to feel I should never in my whole life lose the 
dreadful picture of Miss Wragge running — that 
dreadful human climax after all the non-human 
mystery in the wood — and I was not sorry when a 
servant knocked at my door and said that Colonel 
Wragge would be glad if I would join them in the 
little smoking-room. 

“ I think it is better you should be present,” was 
all Colonel Wragge said as I entered the room. I 
took the chair with my back to the window. There 
was still an hour before lunch, though I imagine 


THE NEMESIS OF EIRE 


195 

that the usual divisions of the day hardly found a 
place in the thoughts of any one of us. 

The atmosphere of the room was what I might 
call electric. The Colonel was positively bristling ; 
he stood with his back to the fire, fingering an unlit 
black cigar, his face flushed, his being obviously 
roused and ready for action. He hated this mystery. 
It was poisonous to his nature, and he longed to 
meet something face to face — something he could 
gauge and fight. Dr. Silence, I noticed at once, was 
sitting before the map of the estate which was spread 
upon a table. I knew by his expression the state of 
his. mind. He was in the thick of it all, knew it, 
delighted in it, and was working at high pressure. 
He recognised my presence with a lifted eyelid, and 
the flash of the eye, contrasted with his stillness and 
composure, told me volumes. 

“ I was about to explain to our host briefly what 
seems to me afoot in all this business,” he said 
without looking up, “ when he asked that you should 
join us so that we can all work together.” And, 
while signifying my assent, I caught myself wonder- 
ing what quality it was in the calm speech of this 
undemonstrative man that was so full of power, so 
charged with the strange, virile personality behind it 
and that seemed to inspire us with his own confi- 
dence as by a process of radiation. 

“Mr. Hubbard,” he went on gravely, turning to 
the soldier, “ knows something of my methods, and 
in more than one — er — interesting situation has 
proved of assistance. What we want now ” — and 
here he suddenly got up and took his place on the 
mat beside the Colonel, and looked hard at him — 
“is men who have self-control, who are sure of 


196 


JOHN SILENCE 


themselves, whose minds at the critical moment 
will emit positive forces, instead of the wavering and 
uncertain currents due to negative feelings — due, for 
instance, to fear.” 

He looked at us each in turn. Colonel Wragge 
moved his feet farther apart, and squared his 
shoulders; and I felt guilty but said nothing, con- 
scious that my latent store of courage was being 
deliberately hauled to the front. He was winding 
me up like a clock. 

K So that, in what is yet to come,” continued our 
leader, “ each of us will contribute his share of power, 
and ensure success for my plan.” 

“ I’m not afraid of anything I can see” said the 
Colonel bluntly. 

“ I’m ready,” I heard myself say, as it were auto- 
matically, “ for anything,” and then added, feeling the 
declaration was lamely insufficient, “ and everything.” 

Dr. Silence left the mat and began walking to and 
fro about the room, both hands plunged deep into 
the pockets of his shooting-jacket. Tremendous 
vitality streamed from him. I never took my eyes 
off the small, moving figure; small, yes, — and yet 
somehow making me think of a giant plotting the 
destruction of worlds. And his manner was gentle, 
as always, soothing almost, and his words uttered 
quietly without emphasis or emotion. Most of what 
he said was addressed, though not too obviously, to 
the Colonel. 

“ The violence of this sudden attack,” he said softly, 
pacing to and fro beneath the bookcase at the end of 
the room, “ is due, of course, partly to the fact that 
to-night the moon is at the full ” — here he glanced at 
me for a moment — “ and partly to the fact that we 


THE NEMESIS OF FIRE 


197 


have all been so deliberately concentrating upon the 
matter. Our thinking, our investigation, has stirred 
it into unusual activity. I mean that the intelligent 
force behind these manifestations has realised that 
some one is busied about its destruction. And it is 
now on the defensive : more, it is aggressive.” 

“ But ‘ it ’ — what is ‘ it ’ ? ” began the soldier, 
fuming. “ What, in the name of all that’s dreadful, 
is a fire-elemental ? ” 

“ I cannot give you at this moment,” replied Dr. 
Silence, turning to him, but undisturbed by the 
interruption, “a lecture on the nature and history 
of magic, but can only say that an Elemental is 
the active force behind the elements, — whether earth, 
air, water, or fire , — it is impersonal in its essential 
nature, but can be focused, personified, ensouled, so 
to say, by those who know how — by magicians, 
if you will — for certain purposes of their own, 
much in the same way that steam and electricity 
can be harnessed by the practical man of this 
century. 

“ Alone, these blind elemental energies can accom- 
plish little, but governed and directed by the trained 
will of a powerful manipulator they may become 
potent activities for good or evil. They are the basis 
of all magic, and it is the motive behind them that 
constitutes the magic ‘ black ’ or ‘ white ’ ; they can be 
the vehicles of curses or of blessings, for a curse is 
nothing more than the thought of a violent will per- 
petuated. And in such cases — cases like this — the 
conscious, directing will of the mind that is using the 
elemental stands always behind the phenomena ■” 

“ You think that my brother ! ” broke in the 

Colonel, aghast. 


JOHN SILENCE 


198 

“ Has nothing whatever to do with it — directly. 
The fire-elemental that has here been tormenting 
you and your household was sent upon its mission 
long before you, or your family, or your ancestors, or 
even the nation you belong to — unless I am much 
mistaken — was even in existence. We will come to 
that a little later ; after the experiment I propose to 
make we shall be more positive. At present I can 
only say we have to deal now, not only with the 
phenomenon of Attacking Fire merely, but with the 
vindictive and enraged intelligence that is direct- 
ing it from behind the scenes — vindictive and 
enraged,” — he repeated the words. 

“ That explains ” began Colonel Wragge, 

seeking furiously for words he could not find 
quickly enough. 

“Much,” said John Silence, with a gesture to 
restrain him. 

He stopped a moment in the middle of his walk, 
and a deep silence came down over the little room. 
Through the windows the sunlight seemed less 
bright, the long line of dark hills less friendly, 
making me think of a vast wave towering to heaven 
and about to break and overwhelm us. Something 
formidable had crept into the world about us. For, 
undoubtedly, there was a disquieting thought, holding 
terror as well as awe, in the picture his words con- 
jured up: the conception of a human will reaching 
its deathless hand, spiteful and destructive, down 
through the ages, to strike the living and afflict the 
innocent. 

“ But what is its object ? ” burst out the soldier, 
unable to restrain himself longer in the silence. 
“Why does it come from that plantation? And 


THE NEMESIS OF FIRE 


199 

why should it attack us, or any one in particular ? ” 
Questions began to pour from him in a stream. 

“All in good time,” the doctor answered quietly, 
having let him run on for several minutes. “ But I 
must first discover positively what, or who, it is that 
directs this particular fire-elemental. And, to do 
that, we must first” — he spoke with slow delibera- 
tion — “seek to capture — to confine by visibility — 
to limit its sphere in a concrete form.” 

“ Good heavens almighty ! ” exclaimed the soldier, 
mixing his words in his unfeigned surprise. 

“ Quite so,” pursued the other calmly ; “ for in so 
doing I think we can release it from the purpose 
that binds it, restore it to its normal condition of 
latent fire, and also” — he lowered his voice per- 
ceptibly — “also discover the face and form of the 
Being that ensouls it.” 

“ The man behind the gun ! ” cried the Colonel, 
beginning to understand something, and leaning 
forward so as not to miss a single syllable. 

“ I mean that in the last resort, before it returns to 
the womb of potential fire, it will probably assume 
the face and figure of its Director, of the man of 
magical knowledge who originally bound it with his 
incantations and sent it forth upon its mission of 
centuries.” 

The soldier sat down and gasped openly in his 
face, breathing hard ; but it was a very subdued voice 
that framed the question. 

“And how do you propose to make it visible? 
How capture and confine it? What d’ye mean, 
Dr. John Silence? ” 

“ By furnishing it with the materials for a form. 
By the process of materialisation simply. Once 


200 


JOHN SILENCE 


limited by dimensions, it will become slow, heavy, 
visible. We can then dissipate it. Invisible fire, you 
see, is dangerous and incalculable ; locked up in a 
form we can perhaps manage it. We must betray 
it — to its death.” 

“And this material?” we asked in the same 
breath, although I think I had already guessed. 

“Not pleasant, but effective,” came the quiet 
reply ; “ the exhalations of freshly-spilled blood.” 

“ Not human blood ! ” cried Colonel Wragge, 
starting up from his chair with a voice like an 
explosion. I thought his eyes would start from their 
sockets. 

The face of Dr. Silence relaxed in spite of himself, 
and his spontaneous little laugh brought a welcome 
though momentary relief. 

“ The days of human sacrifice, I hope, will never 
come again,” he explained. “ Animal blood will 
answer the purpose, and we can make the experiment 
as pleasant as possible. Only, the blood must be 
freshly spilled and strong with the vital emanations 
that attract this peculiar class of elemental creature. 
Perhaps — perhaps if some pig on the estate is ready 
for the market ” 

He turned to hide a smile ; but the passing touch 
of comedy found no echo in the mind of our host, 
who did not understand how to change quickly from 
one emotion to another. Clearly he was debating 
many things laboriously in his honest brain. But, in 
the end, the earnestness and scientific disinterested- 
ness of the doctor, whose influence over him was 
already very great, won the day, and he presently 
looked up more calmly, and observed shortly that he 
thought perhaps the matter could be arranged. 


THE NEMESIS OF FIRE 


201 


“There are other and pleasanter methods,” Dr. 
Silence went on to explain, “ but they require time 
and preparation, and things have gone much too far, 
in my opinion, to admit of delay. And the process 
need cause you no distress : we sit round the bowl and 
await results. Nothing more. The emanations of 
blood — which, as Levi says, is the first incarnation of 
the universal fluid — furnish the materials out of which 
the creatures of discarnate life, spirits if you prefer, can 
fashion themselves a temporary appearance. The 
process is old, and lies at the root of all blood sacrifice. 
It was known to the priests of Baal, and it is known 
to the modern ecstasy dancers who cut themselves to 
produce objective phantoms who dance with them. 
And the least gifted clairvoyant could tell you that 
the forms to be seen in the vicinity of slaughter- 
houses, or hovering above the deserted battlefield, are 
— well, simply beyond all description. I do not mean,” 
he added, noticing the uneasy fidgeting of his host, 
“that anything in our laundry-experiment need 
appear to terrify us, for this case seems a compara- 
tively simple one, and it is only the vindictive 
character of the intelligence directing this fire- 
elemental that causes anxiety and makes for personal 
danger.” 

“ It is curious,” said the Colonel, with a sudden 
rush of words, drawing a deep breath, and as 
though speaking of things distasteful to him, “that 
during my years among the Hill Tribes of Northern 
India I came across — personally came across — 
instances of the sacrifices of blood to certain deities 
being stopped suddenly, and all manner of disasters 
happening until they were resumed. Fires broke 
out in the huts, and even on the clothes, of the 


202 


JOHN SILENCE 


natives — and — and I admit I have read, in the 
course of my studies,” — he made a gesture towards 
his books and heavily laden table, — “of the Yezidis 
of Syria evoking phantoms by means of cutting 
their bodies with knives during their whirling 
dances — enormous globes of fire which turned into 
monstrous and terrible forms — and I remember 
an account somewhere, too, how the emaciated 
forms and pallid countenances of the spectres, 
that appeared to the Emperor Julian, claimed to 
be the true Immortals, and told him to renew 
the sacrifices of blood ‘ for the fumes of which, 
since the establishment of Christianity, they had 
been pining’ — that these were in reality the phan- 
toms evoked by the rites of blood.” 

Both Dr. Silence and myself listened in amaze- 
ment, for this sudden speech was so unexpected, 
and betrayed so much more knowledge than we 
had either of us suspected in the old soldier. 

“ Then perhaps you have read, too,” said the 
doctor, “how the Cosmic Deities of savage races, 
elemental in their nature, have been kept alive 
through many ages by these blood rites?” 

“ No,” he answered ; “ that is new to me.” 

“ In any case,” Dr. Silence added, “ I am glad 
you are not wholly unfamiliar with the subject, 
for you will now bring more sympathy, and there- 
fore more help, to our experiment. For, of course, 
in this case, we only want the blood to tempt 
the creature from its lair and enclose it in a 
form ” 

“ I quite understand. And I only hesitated just 
now,” he went on, his words coming much more 
slowly, as though he felt he had already said too 


THE NEMESIS OF FIRE 


203 


much, “because I wished to be quite sure it was 
no mere curiosity, but an actual sense of necessity 
that dictated this horrible experiment,” 

“It is your safety, and that of your household, 
and of your sister, that is at stake,” replied the 
doctor. “ Once I have seen, I hope to discover 
whence this elemental comes, and what its real 
purpose is.” 

Colonel Wragge signified his assent with a bow. 

“And the moon will help us,” the other said, 
“ for it will be full in the early hours of the 
morning, and this kind of elemental-being is always 
most active at the period of full moon. Hence, 
you see, the clue furnished by your diary.” 

So it was finally settled. Colonel Wragge would 
provide the materials for the experiment, and we 
were to meet at midnight. How he would contrive 
at that hour — but that was his business. I only 
know we both realised that he would keep his 
word, and whether a pig died at midnight, or at 
noon, was after all perhaps only a question of the 
sleep and personal comfort of the executioner. 

“ To-night, then, in the laundry,” said Dr. Silence 
finally, to clinch the plan ; “ we three alone — and 
at midnight, when the household is asleep and we 
shall be free from disturbance.” 

He exchanged significant glances with our host, 
who, at that moment, was called away by the 
announcement that the family doctor had arrived, 
and was ready to see him in his sister’s room. 

For the remainder of the afternoon John Silence 
disappeared. I had my suspicions that he made 
a secret visit to the plantation and also to the 
laundry building ; but, in any case, we saw nothing 


204 


JOHN SILENCE 


of him, and he kept strictly to himself. He was 
preparing for the night, I felt sure, but the nature 
of his preparations I could only guess. There was 
movement in his room, I heard, and an odour like 
incense hung about the door, and knowing that 
he regarded rites as the vehicles of energies, my 
guesses were probably not far wrong. 

Colonel Wragge, too, remained absent the greater 
part of the afternoon, and, deeply afflicted, had 
scarcely left his sister’s bedside, but in response 
to my inquiry when we met for a moment at 
tea-time, he told me that although she had 
moments of attempted speech, her talk was quite 
incoherent and hysterical, and she was still quite 
unable to explain the nature of what she had seen. 
The doctor, he said, feared she had recovered the 
use of her limbs, only to lose that of her memory, 
and perhaps even of her mind. 

“Then the recovery of her legs, I trust, may 
be permanent, at any rate,” I ventured, finding it 
difficult to know what sympathy to offer. And 
he replied with a curious short laugh, “ Oh yes ; 
about that there can be no doubt whatever.” 

And it was due merely to the chance of my 
overhearing a fragment of conversation — unwillingly, 
of course — that a little further light was thrown 
upon the state in which the old lady actually lay. 
For, as I came out of my room, it happened that 
Colonel Wragge and the doctor were going down- 
stairs together, and their words floated up to my 
ears before I could make my presence known by 
so much as a cough. 

“Then you must find a way,” the doctor was 
saying with decision ; “ for I cannot insist too 


THE NEMESIS OF FIRE 


205 


strongly upon that — and at all costs she must be 
kept quiet. These attempts to go out must be 
prevented — if necessary, by force. This desire to 
visit some wood or other she keeps talking about 
is, of course, hysterical in nature. It cannot be 
permitted for a moment.” 

“ It shall not be permitted,” I heard the soldier 
reply, as they reached the hall below. 

“ It has impressed her mind for some reason ” 

the doctor went on, by way evidently of soothing 
explanation, and then the distance made it impossible 
for me to hear more. 

At dinner Dr. Silence was still absent, on the 
public plea of a headache, and though food was 
sent to his room, I am inclined to believe he did 
not touch it, but spent the entire time fasting. 

We retired early, desiring that the household 
should do likewise, and I must confess that at 
ten o’clock when I bid my host a temporary 
good-night, and sought my room to make what 
mental preparation I could, I realised in no very 
pleasant fashion that it was a singular and formid- 
able assignation, this midnight meeting in the 
laundry building, and that there were moments 
in every adventure of life when a wise man, and 
one who knew his own limitations, owed it to 
his dignity to withdraw discreetly. And, but for 
the character of our leader, I probably should have 
then and there offered the best excuse I could 
think of, and have allowed myself quietly to fall 
asleep and wait for an exciting story in the 
morning of what had happened. But with a man 
like John Silence, such a lapse was out of the 
question, and I sat before my fire counting the 


206 


JOHN SILENCE 


minutes and doing everything I could think of 
to fortify my resolution and fasten my will at 
the point where I could be reasonably sure that 
my self-control would hold against all attacks of 
men, devils, or elementals. 


Ill 

At a quarter before midnight, clad in a heavy 
ulster, and with slippered feet, I crept cautiously 
from my room and stole down the passage to the 
top of the stairs. Outside the doctor’s door I waited 
a moment to listen. All was still ; the house in 
utter darkness ; no gleam of light beneath any door ; 
only, down the length of the corridor, from the 
direction of the sick-room, came faint sounds of 
laughter and incoherent talk that were not things to 
reassure a mind already half a-tremble, and I made 
haste to reach the hall and let myself out through 
the front door into the night. 

The air was keen and frosty, perfumed with night 
smells, and exquisitely fresh ; all the million candles 
of the sky were alight, and a faint breeze rose and 
fell with far-away sighings in the tops of the pine 
trees. My blood leaped for a moment in the 
spaciousness of the night, for the splendid stars 
brought courage ; but the next instant, as I turned 
the corner of the house, moving stealthily down the 
gravel drive, my spirits sank again ominously. For, 
yonder, over the funereal plumes of the Twelve Acre 
Plantation, I saw the huge and yellow face of the 
full moon just rising in the east, staring down like 
some vast Being come to watch upon the progress 


THE NEMESIS OF FIRE 


207 


of our doom. Seen through the distorting vapours 
of the earth’s atmosphere, her face looked weirdly 
unfamiliar, her usual expression of benignant vacancy 
somehow a-twist. I slipped along by the shadows 
of the wall, keeping my eyes upon the ground. 

The laundry-house, as already described, stood 
detached from the other offices, with laurel shrubberies 
crowding thickly behind it, and the kitchen-garden 
so close on the other side that the strong smells of 
soil and growing things came across almost heavily. 
The shadows of the haunted plantation, hugely 
lengthened by the rising moon behind them, reached 
to the very walls and covered the stone tiles of the 
roof with a dark pall. So keenly were my senses 
alert at this moment that I believe I could fill a 
chapter with the endless small details of the im- 
pression I received — shadows, odour, shapes, sounds 
— in the space of the few seconds I stood and waited 
before the closed wooden door. 

Then I became aware of some one moving towards 
me through the moonlight, and the figure of John 
Silence, without overcoat and bareheaded, came 
quickly and without noise to join me. His eyes, 
I saw at once, were wonderfully bright, and so 
marked was the shining pallor of his face that I 
could hardly tell when he passed from the moonlight 
into the shade. 

He passed without a word, beckoning me to follow, 
and then pushed the door open, and went in. 

The chill air of the place met us like that of an 
underground vault; and the brick floor and white- 
washed walls, streaked with damp and smoke, 
threw back the cold in our faces. Directly opposite 
gaped the black throat of the huge open fireplace, 


208 


JOHN SILENCE 


the ashes of wood fires still piled and scattered 
about the hearth, and on either side of the pro- 
jecting chimney-column were the deep recesses 
holding the big twin cauldrons for boiling clothes. 
Upon the lids of these cauldrons stood the two little 
oil lamps, shaded red, which gave all the light there 
was, and immediately in front of the fireplace there 
was a small circular table with three chairs set 
about it. Overhead, the narrow slit windows, high 
up the walls, pointed to a dim network of wooden 
rafters half lost among the shadows, and then came 
the dark vault of the roof. Cheerless and unalluring, 
for all the red light, it certainly was, reminding me 
of some unused conventicle, bare of pews or pulpit, 
ugly and severe, and I was forcibly struck by the 
contrast between the normal uses to which the place 
was ordinarily put, and the strange and mediaeval 
purpose which had brought us under its roof 
to-night. 

Possibly an involuntary shudder ran over me, 
for my companion turned with a confident look to 
reassure me, and he was so completely master of 
himself that I at once absorbed from his abundance, 
and felt the chinks of my failing courage beginning 
to close up. To meet his eye in the presence of 
danger was like finding a mental railing that guided 
and supported thought along the giddy edges of alarm. 

“ I am quite ready,” I whispered, turning to listen 
for approaching footsteps. 

He nodded, still keeping his eyes on mine. Our 
whispers sounded hollow as they echoed overhead 
among the rafters. 

“ Pm glad you are here,” he said. “ Not all would 
have the courage. Keep your thoughts controlled, 


THE NEMESIS OF FIRE 


209 

and imagine the protective shell round you — round 
your inner being.” 

“ I’m all right,” I repeated, cursing my chattering 
teeth. 

He took my hand and shook it, and the contact 
seemed to shake into me something of his supreme 
confidence. The eyes and hands of a strong man 
can touch the soul. I think he guessed my thought, 
for a passing smile flashed about the corners of his 
mouth. 

“You will feel more comfortable,” he said, in a 
low tone, “ when the chain is complete. The Colonel 
we can count on, of course. Remember, though,” he 
added warningly, “he may perhaps become con- 
trolled — possessed — when the thing comes, because 
he won’t know how to resist. And to explain the 

business to such a man ! ” He shrugged his 

shoulders expressively. “ But it will only be tem- 
porary, and I will see that no harm comes to 
him.” 

He glanced round at the arrangements with 
approval. 

“ Red light,” he said, indicating the shaded lamps, 
“ has the lowest rate of vibration. Materialisations 
are dissipated by strong light — won’t form, or hold 
together — in rapid vibrations.” 

I was not sure that I approved altogether of this 
dim light, for in complete darkness there is some- 
thing protective — the knowledge that one cannot 
be seen, probably — which a half-light destroys, but 
I remembered the warning to keep my thoughts 
steady, and forbore to give them expression. 

There was a step outside, and the figure of 
Colonel Wragge stood in the doorway. Though 

14 


210 


JOHN SILENCE 


entering on tiptoe, he made considerable noise and 
clatter, for his free movements were impeded by the 
burden he carried, and we saw a large yellowish 
bowl held out at arms’ length from his body, the 
mouth covered with a white cloth. His face, I 
noted, was rigidly composed. He, too, was master 
of himself. And, as I thought of this old soldier 
moving through the long series of alarms, worn with 
watching and wearied with assault, unenlightened 
yet undismayed, even down to the dreadful shock 
of his sister’s terror, and still showing the dogged 
pluck that persists in the face of defeat, I understood 
what Dr. Silence meant when he described him as a 
man “ to be counted on.” 

I think there was nothing beyond this rigidity of 
his stern features, and a certain greyness of the 
complexion, to betray the turmoil of the emotions 
that was doubtless going on within ; and the quality 
of these two men, each in his own way, so keyed me 
up that, by the time the door was shut and we had 
exchanged silent greetings, all the latent courage I 
possessed was well to the fore, and I felt as sure of 
myself as I knew I ever could feel. 

Colonel Wragge set the bowl carefully in the 
centre of the table. 

“ Midnight,” he said shortly, glancing at his watch, 
and we all three moved to our chairs. 

There, in the middle of that cold and silent place, 
we sat, with the vile bowl before us, and a thin, hardly 
perceptible steam rising through the damp air from 
the surface of the white cloth and disappearing 
upwards the moment it passed beyond the zone of 
red light and entered the deep shadows thrown 
forward by the projecting wall of chimney. 


THE NEMESIS OF FIRE 


21 I 


The doctor had indicated our respective places, 
and I found myself seated with my back to the door 
and opposite the black hearth. The Colonel was on 
my left, and Dr. Silence on my right, both half 
facing me, the latter more in shadow than the former. 
We thus divided the little table into even sections, 
and sitting back in our chairs we awaited events in 
silence. 

For something like an hour I do not think there 
was even the faintest sound within those four walls 
and under the canopy of that vaulted roof. Our 
slippers made no scratching on the gritty floor, and 
our breathing was suppressed almost to nothing; 
even the rustle of our clothes as we shifted from 
time to time upon our seats was inaudible. Silence 
smothered us absolutely — the silence of night, of 
listening, the silence of a haunted expectancy. The 
very gurgling of the lamps was too soft to be heard, 
and if light itself had sound, I do not think we should 
have noticed the silvery tread of the moonlight as it 
entered the high narrow windows and threw upon 
the floor the slender traces of its pallid footsteps. 

Colonel Wragge and the doctor, and myself too 
for that matter, sat thus like figures of stone, without 
speech and without gesture. My eyes passed in 
ceaseless journeys from the bowl to their faces, and 
from their faces to the bowl. They might have been 
masks, however, for all the signs of life they gave ; and 
the light steaming from the horrid contents beneath 
the white cloth had long ceased to be visible. 

Then presently, as the moon rose higher, the wind 
rose with it. It sighed, like the lightest of passing 
wings, over the roof ; it crept most softly round the 
walls ; it made the brick floor like ice beneath our feet. 


212 


JOHN SILENCE 


With it I saw mentally the desolate moorland flowing 
like a sea about the old house, the treeless expanse 
of lonely hills, the nearer copses, sombre, and myster- 
ious in the night. The plantation, too, in particular 
I saw, and imagined I heard the mournful whis- 
perings that must now be a -stirring among its 
tree-tops as the breeze played down between the 
twisted stems. In the depth of the room behind us 
the shafts of moonlight met and crossed in a growing 
network. 

It was after an hour of this wearing and unbroken 
attention, and I should judge about one o’clock in 
the morning, when the baying of the dogs in the 
stable-yard first began, and I saw John Silence move 
suddenly in his chair and sit up in an attitude of 
attention. Every force in my being instantly leaped 
into the keenest vigilance. Colonel Wragge moved 
too, though slowly, and without raising his eyes from 
the table before him. 

The doctor stretched his arm out and took the 
white cloth from the bowl. 

It was perhaps imagination that persuaded me 
the red glare of the lamps grew fainter and the 
air over the table before us thickened. I had been 
expecting something for so long that the movement 
of my companions, and the lifting of the cloth, may 
easily have caused the momentary delusion that 
something hovered in the air before my face, 
touching the skin of my cheeks with a silken run. 
But it was certainly not a delusion that the Colonel 
looked up at the same moment and glanced over his 
shoulder, as though his eyes followed the movements 
of something to and fro about the room, and that he 
then buttoned his overcoat more tightly about him 


THE NEMESIS OF FIRE 


213 


and his eyes sought my own face first, and then the 
doctor’s. And it was no delusion that his face 
seemed somehow to have turned dark, become spread 
as it were with a shadowy blackness. I saw his lips 
tighten and his expression grow hard and stern, and 
it came to me then with a rush that, of course, this 
man had told us but a part of the experiences he 
had been through in the house, and that there was 
much more he had never been able to bring himself 
to reveal at all. I felt sure of it. The way he turned 
and stared about him betrayed a familiarity with 
other things than those he had described to us. It 
was not merely a sight of fire he looked for ; it was 
a sight of something alive, intelligent, something able 
to evade his searching ; it was a person . It was the 
watch for the ancient Being who sought to obsess 
him. 

And the way in which Dr. Silence answered his 
look — though it was only by a glance of subtlest 
sympathy — confirmed my impression. 

“ We may be ready now,” I heard him say in a 
whisper, and I understood that his words were 
intended as a steadying warning, and braced myself 
mentally to the utmost of my power. 

Yet long before Colonel Wragge had turned to 
stare about the room, and long before the doctor had 
confirmed my impression that things were at last 
beginning to stir, I had become aware in most singular 
fashion that the place held more than our three 
selves. With the rising of the wind this increase to 
our numbers had first taken place. The baying of 
the hounds almost seemed to have signalled it. I 
cannot say how it may be possible to realise that an 
empty place has suddenly become— not empty, when 


214 


.JOHN SILENCE 


the new arrival is nothing that appeals to any one 
of the senses ; for this recognition of an “ invisible,” 
as of the change in the balance of personal forces 
in a human group, is indefinable and beyond proof. 
Yet it is unmistakable. And I knew perfectly well 
at what given moment the atmosphere within these 
four walls became charged with the presence of other 
living beings besides ourselves. And, on reflection, 
I am convinced that both my companions knew it 
too. 

“ Watch the light,” said the doctor under his breath, 
and then I knew too that it was no fancy of my own 
that had turned the air darker, and the way he 
turned to examine the face of our host sent an electric 
thrill of wonder and expectancy shivering along 
every nerve in my body. 

Yet it was no kind of terror that I experienced, 
but rather a sort of mental dizziness, and a sensation 
as of being suspended in some remote and dreadful 
altitude where things might happen, indeed were 
about to happen, that had never before happened 
within the ken of man. Horror may have formed 
an ingredient, but it was not chiefly horror, and in no 
sense ghostly horror. 

Uncommon thoughts kept beating on my brain 
like tiny hammers, soft yet persistent, seeking 
admission ; their unbidden tide began to wash 
along the far fringes of my mind, the currents of 
unwonted sensations to rise over the remote frontiers 
of my consciousness. I was aware of thoughts, and 
the fantasies of thoughts, that I never knew before 
existed. Portions of my being stirred that had never 
stirred before, and things ancient and inexplicable 
rose to the surface and beckoned me to follow. I felt 


THE NEMESIS OF FIRE 


215 


as though I were about to fly off, at some immense 
tangent, into an outer space hitherto unknown even 
in dreams. And so singular was the result pro- 
duced upon me that I was uncommonly glad to 
anchor my mind, as well as my eyes, upon the master- 
ful personality of the doctor at my side, for there, 
I realised, I could draw always upon the forces of 
sanity and safety. 

With a vigorous effort of will I returned to the 
scene before me, and tried to focus my attention, with 
steadier thoughts, upon the table, and upon the 
silent figures seated round it. And then I saw that 
certain changes had come about in the place where 
we sat. 

The patches of moonlight on the floor, I noted, 
had become curiously shaded; the faces of my 
companions opposite were not so clearly visible as 
before ; and the forehead and cheeks of Colonel 
Wragge were glistening with perspiration. I realised 
further, that an extraordinary change had come 
about in the temperature of the atmosphere. The 
increased warmth had a painful effect, not alone on 
Colonel Wragge, but upon all of us. It was oppres- 
sive and unnatural. We gasped figuratively as well 
as actually. 

“You are the first to feel it,” said Dr. Silence in 
low tones, looking across at him. “You are in more 
intimate touch, of course ” 

The Colonel was trembling, and appeared to be 
in considerable distress. His knees shook, so that 
the shuffling of his slippered feet became audible. 
He inclined his head to show that he had heard, but 
made no other reply. I think, even then, he was 
sore put to it to keep himself in hand. I knew 


21 6 


JOHN SILENCE 


what he was struggling against. As Dr. Silence 
had warned me, he was about to be obsessed, and 
was savagely, though vainly, resisting. 

But, meanwhile, a curious and whirling sense of 
exhilaration began to come over me. The increas- 
ing heat was delightful, bringing a sensation of 
intense activity, of thoughts pouring through the 
mind at high speed, of vivid pictures in the brain, 
of fierce desires and lightning energies alive in every 
part of the body. I was conscious of no physical 
distress, such as the Colonel felt, but only of a vague 
feeling that it might all grow suddenly too intense — 
that I might be consumed — that my personality 
as well as my body, might become resolved into 
the flame of pure spirit. I began to live at a speed 
too intense to last. It was as if a thousand ecstasies 
besieged me 

“Steady!” whispered the voice of John Silence in 
my ear, and I looked up with a start to see that the 
Colonel had risen from his chair. The doctor rose 
too. I followed suit, and for the first time saw down 
into the bowl. To my amazement and horror I saw 
that the contents were troubled. The blood was 
astir with movement. 

The rest of the experiment was witnessed by us 
standing. It came, too, with a curious suddenness. 
There was no more dreaming, for me at any rate. 

I shall never forget the figure of Colonel Wragge 
standing there beside me, upright and unshaken, 
squarely planted on his feet, looking about him, 
puzzled beyond belief, yet full of a fighting anger. 
Framed by the white walls, the red glow of the lamps 
upon his streaming cheeks, his eyes glowing against 
the deathly pallor of his skin, breathing hard and 


THE NEMESIS OF FIRE 


217 


making convulsive efforts of hands and body to keep 
himself under control, his whole being roused 
to the point of savage fighting, yet with nothing 
visible to get at anywhere — he stood there, immovable 
against odds. And the strange contrast of the pale 
skin and the burning face I had never seen before, 
or wish to seen again. 

But what has left an even sharper impression on 
my memory was the blackness that then began 
crawling over his face, obliterating the features, 
concealing their human outline, and hiding him inch 
by inch from view. This was my first realisation 
that the process of materialisation was at work. His 
visage became shrouded. I moved from one side to 
the other to keep him in view, and it was only then 
I understood that, properly speaking, the blackness 
was not upon the countenance of Colonel Wragge, 
but that something had inserted itself between me 
and him, thus screening his face with the effect of a 
dark veil. Something that apparently rose through 
the floor was passing slowly into the air above the 
table and above the bowl. The blood in the bowl, 
moreover, was considerably less than before. 

And, with this change in the air before us, there 
came at the same time a further change, I thought, 
in the face of the soldier. One-half was turned 
towards the red lamps, while the other caught the 
pale illumination of the moonlight falling aslant 
from the high windows, so that it was difficult to 
estimate this change with accuracy of detail. But 
it seemed to me that, while the features — eyes, nose, 
mouth — remained the same, the life informing them 
had undergone some profound transformation. The 
signature of a new power had crept into the face 


218 


JOHN SILENCE 


and left its traces there — an expression dark, and in 
some unexplained way, terrible. 

Then suddenly he opened his mouth and spoke, 
and the sound of this changed voice, deep and 
musical though it was, made me cold and set my 
heart beating with uncomfortable rapidity. The 
Being, as he had dreaded, was already in control 
of his brain, using his mouth. 

“ I see a blackness like the blackness of Egypt 
before my face,” said the tones of this unknown 
voice that seemed half his own and half another’s. 
“ And out of this darkness they come, they come.” 

I gave a dreadful start. The doctor turned to look 
at me for an instant, and then turned to centre his 
attention upon the figure of our host, and I under- 
stood in some intuitive fashion that he was there 
to watch over the strangest contest man ever saw — 
to watch over and, if necessary, to protect. 

“ He is being controlled — possessed,” he whispered 
to me through the shadows. His face wore a 
wonderful expression, half triumph, half admiration. 

Even as Colonel Wragge spoke, it seemed to me 
that this visible darkness began to increase, pouring 
up thickly out of the ground by the hearth, rising up 
in sheets and veils, shrouding our eyes and faces. 
It stole up from below — an awful blackness that 
seemed to drink in all the radiations of light in 
the building, leaving nothing but the ghost of a 
radiance in their place. Then, out of this rising 
sea of shadows, issued a pale and spectral light 
that gradually spread itself about us, and from the 
heart of this light I saw the shapes of fire crowd 
and gather. And these were not human shapes, 
or the shapes of anything I recognised as alive in 


THE NEMESIS OF FIRE 


219 

the world, but outlines of fire that traced globes, 
triangles, crosses, and the luminous bodies of various 
geometrical figures. They grew bright, faded, and 
then grew bright again with an effect almost of 
pulsation. They passed swiftly to and fro through 
the air, rising and falling, and particularly in the 
immediate neighbourhood of the Colonel, often 
gathering about his head and shoulders, and even 
appearing to settle upon him like giant insects of 
flame. They were accompanied, moreover, by a 
faint sound of hissing — the same sound we had 
heard that afternoon in the plantation. 

“The fire-elementals that precede their master,” 
the doctor said in an undertone. “ Be ready.” 

And while this weird display of the shapes of fire 
alternately flashed and faded, and the hissing echoed 
faintly among the dim rafters overhead, we heard 
the awful voice issue at intervals from the lips of the 
afflicted soldier. It was a voice of power, splendid 
in some way I cannot describe, and with a certain 
sense of majesty in its cadences, and, as I listened 
to it with quickly-beating heart, I could fancy it 
was some ancient voice of Time itself, echoing down 
immense corridors of stone, from the depths of 
vast temples, from the very heart of mountain tombs. 

“ I have seen my divine Father, Osiris,” thundered 
the great tones. “ I have scattered the gloom of 
the night. I have burst through the earth, and 
am one with the starry Deities ! ” 

Something grand came into the soldier’s face. 
He was staring fixedly before him, as though seeing 
nothing. 

“Watch,” whispered Dr. Silence in my ear, and 
his whisper seemed to come from very far away. 


220 


JOHN SILENCE 


Again the mouth opened and the awesome voice 
issued forth. 

“Thoth,” it boomed, “has loosened the bandages 
of Set which fettered my mouth. I have taken my 
place in the great winds of heaven.” 

I heard the little wind of night, with its mournful 
voice of ages, sighing round the walls and over 
the roof. 

“ Listen ! ” came from the doctor at my side, and 
the thunder of the voice continued — 

“ I have hidden myself with you, O ye stars that 
never diminish. I remember my name — in — the — 
House — of — Fire ! ” 

The voice ceased and the sound died away. 
Something about the face and figure of Colonel 
Wragge relaxed, I thought. The terrible look 
passed from his face. The Being that obsessed him 
was gone. 

“The great Ritual,” said Dr. Silence aside to 
me, very low, “the Book of the Dead. Now it’s 
leaving him. Soon the blood will fashion it a body.” 

Colonel Wragge, who had stood absolutely motion- 
less all this time, suddenly swayed, so that I 
thought he was going to fall, — and, but for the 
quick support of the doctor’s arm, he probably 
would have fallen, for he staggered as in the 
beginning of collapse. 

“ I am drunk with the wine of Osiris,” he cried, — 
and it was half with his own voice this time — “but 
Horus, the Eternal Watcher, is about my path — 
for — safety.” The voice dwindled and failed, dying 
away into something almost like a cry of distress. 

“Now, watch closely,” said Dr. Silence, speaking 
loud, “ for after the cry will come the Fire ! ” 


THE NEMESIS OF FIRE 


22 I 


I began to tremble involuntarily ; an awful 
change had come without warning into the air ; 
my legs grew weak as paper beneath my weight 
and I had to support myself by leaning on the 
table. Colonel Wragge, I saw, was also leaning 
forward with a kind of droop. The shapes of fire 
had vanished all, but his face was lit by the red 
lamps and the pale shifting moonlight rose behind 
him like mist. 

We were both gazing at the bowl, now almost 
empty ; the Colonel stooped so low I feared every 
minute he would lose his balance and drop into it ; 
and the shadow, that had so long been in process 
of forming, now at length began to assume material 
outline in the air before us. 

Then John Silence moved forward quickly. He 
took his place between us and the shadow. Erect, 
formidable, absolute master of the situation, I saw 
him stand there, his face calm and almost smiling, 
and fire in his eyes. His protective influence was 
astounding and incalculable. Even the abhorrent 
dread I felt at the sight of the creature growing 
into life and substance before us, lessened in some 
way so that I was able to keep my eyes fixed on 
the air above the bowl without too vivid a terror. 

But as it took shape, rising out of nothing as it 
were, and growing momentarily more defined in 
outline, a period of utter and wonderful silence 
settled down upon the building and all it contained. 
A hush of ages, like the sudden centre of peace 
at the heart of the travelling cyclone, descended 
through the night, and out of this hush, as out 
of the emanations of the steaming blood, issued 
the form of the ancient being who had first sent the 


222 


JOHN SILENCE 


elemental of fire upon its mission. It grew and 
darkened and solidified before our eyes. It rose 
from just beyond the table so that the lower 
portions remained invisible, but I saw the outline 
limn itself upon the air, as though slowly revealed 
by the rising of a curtain. It apparently had not 
then quite concentrated to the normal proportions, 
but was spread out on all sides into space, huge, 
though rapidly condensing, for I saw the colossal 
shoulders, the neck, the lower portion of the dark 
jaws, the terrible mouth, and then the teeth and 
lips — and, as the veil seemed to lift further upon 
the tremendous face — I saw the nose and cheek 
bones. In another moment I should have looked 

straight into the eyes 

But what Dr. Silence did at that moment was 
so unexpected, and took me so by surprise, that I 
have never yet properly understood its nature, and 
he has never yet seen fit to explain in detail to 
me. He uttered some sound that had a note of 
command in it — and, in so doing, stepped forward 
and intervened between me and the face. The 
figure, just nearing completeness, he therefore hid 
from my sight — and I have always thought pur- 
posely hid from my sight. 

“ The fire ! ” he cried out. " The fire ! Beware ! ” 
There was a sudden roar as of flame from the 
very mouth of the pit, and for the space of a 
single second all grew light as day. A blinding 
flash passed across my face, and there was heat 
for an instant that seemed to shrivel skin, and flesh, 
and bone. Then came steps, and I heard Colonel 
Wragge utter a great cry, wilder than any human 
cry I have ever known. The heat sucked all the 


THE NEMESIS OF EIRE 


223 


breath out of my lungs with a rush, and the blaze 
of light, as it vanished, swept my vision with it into 
enveloping darkness. 

When I recovered the use of my senses a few 
moments later I saw that Colonel Wragge with 
a face of death, its whiteness strangely stained, 
had moved closer to me. Dr. Silence stood beside 
him, an expression of triumph and success in his 
eyes. The next minute the soldier tried to clutch 
me with his hand. Then he reeled, staggered, 
and, unable to save himself, fell with a great crash 
upon the brick floor. 

After the sheet of flame, a wind raged round 
the building as though it would lift the roof off, 
but then passed as suddenly as it came. And in 
the intense calm that followed I saw that the form 
had vanished, and the doctor was stooping over 
Colonel Wragge upon the floor, trying to lift him 
to a sitting position. 

“Light,” he said quietly, “more light. Take the 
shades off.” 

Colonel Wragge sat up and the glare of the 
unshaded lamps fell upon his face. It was grey 
and drawn, still running heat, and there was a 
look in the eyes and about the corners of the mouth 
that seemed in this short space of time to have 
added years to its age. At the same time, the ex- 
pression of effort and anxiety had left it. It showed 
relief. 

“Gone!” he said, looking up at the doctor in a 
dazed fashion, and struggling to his feet. “Thank 
God ! it’s gone at last ” He stared round the laundry 
as though to find out where he was. “Did it 
control me — take possession of me? Did I talk 


2 24 


JOHN SILENCE 


nonsense?” he asked bluntly. “After the heat 
came, I remember nothing ” 

“You’ll feel yourself again in a few minutes,” 
the doctor said. To my infinite horror I saw that 
he was surreptitiously wiping sundry dark stains 
from the face. “ Our experiment has been a success 
and ” 

He gave me a swift glance to hide the bowl, 
standing between me and our host while I hurriedly 
stuffed it down under the lid of the nearest cauldron. 

“ and none of us the worse for it,” he finished. 

“And fires?” he asked, still dazed, “there’ll be 
no more fires?” 

“It is dissipated — partly, at any rate,” replied 
Dr. Silence cautiously. 

“And the man behind the gun,” he went on, 
only half realising what he was saying, I think ; 
“have you discovered that ?” 

“A form materialised,” said the doctor briefly. 
“ I know for certain now what the directing in- 
telligence was behind it all.” 

Colonel Wragge pulled himself together and 
got upon his feet. The words conveyed no clear 
meaning to him yet. But his memory was returning 
gradually, and he was trying to piece together the 
fragments into a connected whole. He shivered 
a little, for the place had grown suddenly chilly. 
The air was empty again, lifeless. 

“You feel all right again now,” Dr. Silence 
said, in the tone of a man stating a fact rather 
than asking a question. 

“Thanks to you — both, yes.” He drew a deep 
breath, and mopped his face, and even attempted 
a smile. He made me think of a man coming from 


THE NEMESIS OF FIRE 


225 


the battlefield with the stains of fighting still upon 
him, but scornful of his wounds. Then he turned 
gravely towards the doctor with a question in his 
eyes. Memory had returned and he was himself 
again. 

“ Precisely what I expected,” the doctor said 
calmly ; “ a fire-elemental sent upon its mission in 
the days of Thebes, centuries before Christ, and 
to-night, for the first time all these thousands of 
years, released from the spell that originally bound 
it” 

We stared at him in amazement, Colonel Wragge 
opening his lips for words that refused to shape 
themselves. 

“And, if we dig,” he continued significantly, 
pointing to the floor where the blackness had poured 
up, “we shall find some underground connection 
— a tunnel most likely — leading to the Twelve 
Acre Wood. It was made by — your predecessor.” 

“ A tunnel made by my brother ! ” gasped the 
soldier. “Then my sister should know — she lived 
here with him ” He stopped suddenly. 

John Silence inclined his head slowly. “I think 
so,” he said quietly. “Your brother, no doubt, was 
as much tormented as you have been,” he continued 
after a pause in which Colonel Wragge seemed 
deeply preoccupied with his thoughts, “ and tried to 
find peace by burying it in the wood, and surrounding 
the wood then, like a large magic circle, with the 
enchantments ot the old formulae. So the stars the 
man saw blazing ” 

“But burying whatV' asked the soldier faintly, 
stepping backwards towards the support of the wall. 

Dr. Silence regarded us both intently for a moment 
i5 


226 


JOHN SILENCE 


before he replied. I think he weighed in his mind 
whether to tell us now, or when the investigation 
was absolutely complete. 

“ The mummy,” he said softly, after a moment ; 
“ the mummy that your brother took from its resting- 
place of centuries, and brought home — here.” 

Colonel Wragge dropped down upon the nearest 
chair, hanging breathlessly on every word. He 
was far too amazed for speech. 

“ The mummy of some important person — a priest 
most likely — protected from disturbance and dese- 
cration by the ceremonial magic of the time. For 
they understood how to attach to the mummy, to 
lock up with it in the tomb, an elemental force that 
would direct itself even after ages upon any one 
who dared to molest it. In this case it was an 
elemental of fire.” 

Dr. Silence crossed the floor and turned out the 
lamps one by one. He had nothing more to say for 
the moment. Following his example, I folded the 
table together and took up the chairs, and our host, 
still dazed and silent, mechanically obeyed him and 
moved to the door. 

We removed all traces of the experiment, taking the 
empty bowl back to the house concealed beneath an 
ulster. 

The air was cool and fragrant as we walked to the 
house, the stars beginning to fade overhead and a 
fresh wind of early morning blowing up out of the 
east where the sky was already hinting of the coming 
day. It was after five o’clock. 

Stealthily we entered the front hall and locked 
the door, and as we went on tiptoe upstairs to our 
rooms, the Colonel, peering at us over his candle as 


THE NEMESIS OF FIRE 


227 


he nodded good-night, whispered that if we were 
ready the digging should be begun that very 
day. 

Then I saw him steal along to his sister’s room and 
disappear. 


IV 

But not even the mysterious references to the 
mummy, or the prospect of a revelation by digging, 
were able to hinder the reaction that followed the 
intense excitement of the past twelve hours, and I 
slept the sleep of the dead, dreamless and undisturbed. 
A touch on the shoulder woke me, and I saw Dr. 
Silence standing beside the bed, dressed to go 
out. 

“Come,” he said, “it’s tea-time. You’ve slept the 
best part of a dozen hours.” 

I sprang up and made a hurried toilet, while my 
companion sat and talked. He looked fresh and 
rested, and his manner was even quieter than 
usual. 

“Colonel Wragge has provided spades and pick- 
axes. We’re going out to unearth this mummy at 
once,” he said ; “ and there’s no reason we should not 
get away by the morning train.” 

“ I’m ready to go to-night, if you are,” I said 
honestly. 

But Dr. Silence shook his head. 

“ I must see this through to the end,” he said 
gravely, and in a tone that made me think he still 
anticipated serious things, perhaps. He went on 
talking while I dressed. 

“This case is really typical of all stories of 


228 


JOHN SILENCE 


mummy-haunting, and none of them are cases to 
trifle with,” he explained, “for the mummies ot 
important people — kings, priests, magicians — were 
laid away with profoundly significant ceremonial, 
and were very effectively protected, as you have 
seen, against desecration, and especially against 
destruction. 

“ The general belief,” he went on, anticipating my 
questions, “held, of course, that the perpetuity of 
the mummy guaranteed that of its Ka, — the owner’s 
spirit, — but it is not improbable that the magical 
embalming was also used to retard reincarnation, the 
preservation of the body preventing the return of the 
spirit to the toil and discipline of earth-life ; and, in 
any case, they knew how to attach powerful guardian- 
forces to keep off trespassers. And any one who dared 
to remove the mummy, or especially to unwind it — 
well,” he added, with meaning, “you have seen — 
and you zvill see.” 

I caught his face in the mirror while I struggled 
with my collar. It was deeply serious. There could 
be no question that he spoke of what he believed 
and knew. 

“The traveller-brother who brought it here must 
have been haunted too,” he continued, “ for he tried 
to banish it by burial in the wood, making a magic 
circle to enclose it. Something of genuine cere- 
monial he must have known, for the stars the man 
saw were of course the remains of the still flaming 
pentagrams he traced at intervals in the circle. 
Only he did not know enough, or possibly was 
ignorant that the mummy’s guardian was a fire- 
force. Fire cannot be enclosed by fire, though, as 
you saw, it can be released by it.” 


THE NEMESIS OF FIKE 


229 

‘Then that awful figure in the laundry?” I asked, 
thrilled to find him so communicative. 

“Undoubtedly the actual Ka of the mummy 
operating always behind its agent, the elemental, and 
most likely thousands of years old.” 

“And Miss Wragge ?” I ventured once 

more. 

“ Ah, Miss Wragge,” he repeated with increased 
gravity, “ Miss Wragge ” 

A knock at the door brought a servant with word 
that tea was ready, and the Colonel had sent to ask 
if we were coming down. The thread was broken. 
Dr. Silence moved to the door and signed to me to 
follow. But his manner told me that in any case no 
real answer would have been forthcoming to my 
question. 

“And the place to dig in,” I asked, unable to 
restrain my curiosity, “will you find it by some 
process of divination or ? ” 

He paused at the door and looked back at me, and 
with that he left me to finish my dressing. 

It was growing dark when the three of us silently 
made our way to the Twelve Acre Plantation; the 
sky was overcast, and a black wind came out of the 
east. Gloom hung about the old house and the air 
seemed full of sighings. We found the tools ready 
laid at the edge of the wood, and each shouldering 
his piece, we followed our leader at once in among 
the trees. He went straight forward for some twenty 
yards and then stopped. At his feet lay the 
blackened circle of one of the burned places. It 
was just discernible against the surrounding white 
grass. 

“ There are three of these,” he said, “ and they all 


230 


JOHN SILENCE 


lie in a line with one another. Any one of them 
will tap the tunnel that connects the laundry — the 
former Museum — with the chamber where the 
mummy now lies buried.” 

He at once cleared away the burnt grass and began 
to dig ; we all began to dig. While I used the pick, 
the others shovelled vigorously. No one spoke. 
Colonel Wragge worked the hardest of the three. 
The soil was light and sandy, and there were only a 
few snake-like roots and occasional loose stones to 
delay us. The pick made short work of these. And 
meanwhile the darkness settled about us and the 
biting wind swept roaring through the trees over- 
head. 

Then, quite suddenly, without a cry, Colonel 
Wragge disappeared up to his neck. 

“ The tunnel ! ” cried the doctor, helping to drag 
him out, red, breathless, and covered with sand and 
perspiration. " Now, let me lead the way.” And he 
slipped down nimbly into the hole, so that a moment 
later we heard his voice, muffled by sand and distance, 
rising up to us. 

“Hubbard, you come next, and then Colonel 
Wragge — if he wishes,” we heard. 

“ I’ll follow you, of course,” he said, looking at me 
as I scrambled in. 

The hole was bigger now, and I got down on all- 
fours in a channel not much bigger than a large 
sewer-pipe and found myself in total darkness. A 
minute later a heavy thud, followed by a cataract of 
loose sand, announced the arrival of the Colonel. 

“ Catch hold of my heel,” called Dr. Silence, “ and 
Colonel Wragge can take yours.” 

In this slow, laborious fashion we wormed our way 


THE NEMESIS OF FIRE 


231 

along a tunnel that had been roughly dug out of the 
shifting sand, and was shored up clumsily by means 
of wooden pillars and posts. Any moment, it seemed 
to me, we might be buried alive. We could not see 
an inch before our eyes, but had to grope our way 
feeling the pillars and the walls. It was difficult to 
breathe, and the Colonel behind me made but slow 
progress, for the cramped position of our bodies was 
very severe. 

We had travelled in this way for ten minutes, and 
gone perhaps as much as ten yards, when I lost my 
grasp of the doctor’s heel. 

“ Ah ! ” I heard his voice, sounding above me 
somewhere. He was standing up in a clear space, 
and the next moment I was standing beside him. 
Colonel Wragge came heavily after, and he too rose 
up and stood. Then Dr. Silence produced his 
candles and we heard preparations for striking 
matches. 

Yet even before there was light, an indefinable 
sensation of awe came over us all. In this hole in the 
sand, some three feet under ground, we stood side by 
side, cramped and huddled, struck suddenly with an 
overwhelming apprehension of something ancient, 
something formidable, something incalculably won- 
derful, that touched in each one of us a sense of 
the sublime and the terrible even before we could 
see an inch before our faces. I know not how to 
express in language this singular emotion that 
caught us here in utter darkness, touching no sense 
directly, it seemed, yet with the recognition that 
before us in the blackness of this underground night 
there lay something that was mighty with the 
mightiness of long past ages. 


232 


JOHN SILENCE 


I felt Colonel Wragge press in closely to my side, 
and I understood the pressure and welcomed it. No 
human touch, to me at least, has ever been more 
eloquent. 

Then the match flared, a thousand shadows fled 
on black wings, and I saw John Silence fumbling 
with the candle, his face lit up grotesquely by the 
flickering light below it. 

I had dreaded this light, yet when it came there 
was apparently nothing to explain the profound 
sensations of dread that preceded it. We stood in a 
small vaulted chamber in the sand, the sides and 
roof shored with bars of wood, and the ground laid 
roughly with what seemed to be tiles. It was six 
feet high, so that we could all stand comfortably, and 
may have been ten feet long by eight feet wide. 
Upon the wooden pillars at the side I saw that 
Egyptian hieroglyphics had been rudely traced by 
burning. 

Dr. Silence lit three candles and handed one to 
each of us. He placed a fourth in the sand against 
the wall on his right, and another to mark the 
entrance to the tunnel. We stood and stared about 
us, instinctively holding our breath. 

“ Empty, by God ! ” exclaimed Colonel Wragge. 
His voice trembled with excitement. And then, as 
his eyes rested on the ground, he added, “ And 
footsteps — look — footsteps in the sand ! ” 

Dr. Silence said nothing. He stooped down and 
began to make a search of the chamber, and as he 
moved, my eyes followed his crouching figure and 
noted the queer distorted shadows that poured over 
the walls and ceiling after him. Here and there thin 
trickles of loose sand ran fizzing down the sides. 


THE NEMESIS OF FIRE 


233 


The atmosphere, heavily charged with faint yet 
pungent odours, lay utterly still, and the flames of 
the candles might have been painted on the air for 
all the movement they betrayed. 

And, as I watched, it was almost necessary to 
persuade myself forcibly that I was only standing 
upright with difficulty in this little sand-hole of a 
modern garden in the south of England, for it 
seemed to me that I stood, as in vision, at the 
entrance of some vast rock-hewn Temple far, 
far down the river of Time. The illusion was 
powerful, and persisted. Granite columns, that rose 
to heaven, piled themselves about me, majestically 
uprearing, and a roof like the sky itself spread above 
a line of colossal figures that moved in shadowy 
procession along endless and stupendous aisles. 
This huge and splendid fantasy, borne I knew not 
whence, possessed me so vividly that I was actually 
obliged to concentrate my attention upon the small 
stooping figure of the doctor, as he groped about 
the walls, in order to keep the eye of imagination on 
the scene before me. 

But the limited space rendered a long search out 
of the question, and his footsteps, instead of shuffling 
through loose sand, presently struck something of 
a different quality that gave forth a hollow and 
resounding echo. He stooped to examine more 
closely. 

He was standing exactly in the centre of the little 
chamber when this happened, and he at once began 
scraping away the sand with his feet. In less than 
a minute a smooth surface became visible — the 
surface of a wooden covering. The next thing I saw 
was that he had raised it and was peering down into 


234 


JOHN SILENCE 


a space below. Instantly, a strong odour of nitre 
and bitumen, mingled with the strange perfume of 
unknown and powdered aromatics, rose up from the 
uncovered space and filled the vault, stinging the 
throat and making the eyes water and smart. 

“The mummy!” whispered Dr. Silence, looking 
up into our faces over his candle ; and as he said the 
word I felt the soldier lurch against me, and heard 
his breathing in my very ear. 

“ The mummy ! ” he repeated under his breath, as 
we pressed forward to look. 

It is difficult to say exactly why the sight should 
have stirred in me so prodigious an emotion of 
wonder and veneration, for I have had not a little to 
do with mummies, have unwound scores of them, 
and even experimented magically with not a few. 
But there was something in the sight of that grey 
and silent figure, lying in its modern box of lead and 
wood at the bottom of this sandy grave, swathed in 
the bandages of centuries and wrapped in the per- 
fumed linen that the priests of Egypt had prayed 
over with their mighty enchantments thousands of 
years before — something in the sight of it lying there 
and breathing its own spice-laden atmosphere even 
in the darkness of its exile in this remote land, 
something that pierced to the very core of my being 
and touched that root of awe which slumbers in 
every man near the birth of tears and the passion of 
true worship. 

I remember turning quickly from the Colonel, lest 
he should see my emotion, yet fail to understand its 
cause, turn and clutch John Silence by the arm, and 
then fall trembling to see that he, too, had lowered 
his head and was hiding his face in his hands. 


THE NEMESIS OF FIRE 


235 


A kind of whirling storm came over me, rising out 
of I know not what utter deeps of memory, and in 
a whiteness of vision I heard the magical old 
chauntings from the Book of the Dead, and saw the 
Gods pass by in dim procession, the mighty, im- 
memorial Beings who were yet themselves only the 
personified attributes of the true Gods, the God with 
the Eyes of Fire, the God with the Face of Smoke. 
I saw again Anubis, the dog-faced deity, and the 
children of Horus, eternal watcher of the ages, as 
they swathed Osiris, the first mummy of the world, 
in the scented and mystic bands, and I tasted 
again something of the ecstasy of the justified soul 
as it embarked in the golden Boat of Ra, and 
journeyed onwards to rest in the fields of the 
blessed. 

And then, as Dr. Silence, with infinite reverence, 
stooped and touched the still face, so dreadfully 
staring with its painted eyes, there rose again to our 
nostrils wave upon wave of this perfume of thousands 
of years, and time fled backwards like a thing ot 
naught, showing me in haunted panorama the most 
wonderful dream of the whole world. 

A gentle hissing became audible in the air, and 
the doctor moved quickly backwards. It came close 
to our faces and then seemed to play about the 
walls and ceiling. 

“The last of the Fire — still waiting for its full 
accomplishment, 1 ” he muttered ; but I heard both 
words and hissing as things far away, for I was still 
busy with the journey of the soul through the 
Seven Halls of Death, listening for echoes of the 
grandest ritual ever known to men. 

The earthen plates covered with hieroglyphics 


236 


JOHN SILENCE 


still lay beside the mummy, and round it, carefully 
arranged at the points of the compass, stood the 
four jars with the heads of the hawk, the jackal, the 
cynocephalus, and man, the jars in which were 
placed the hair, the nail parings, the heart, and 
other special portions of the body. Even the 
amulets, the mirror, the blue clay statues of the Ka, 
and the lamp with seven wicks were there. Only 
the sacred scarabaeus was missing. 

“Not only has it been torn from its ancient 
resting-place,” I heard Dr. Silence saying in a 
solemn voice as he looked at Colonel Wragge with 
fixed gaze, “ but it has been partially unwound,” — he 
pointed to the wrappings of the breast, — “ and — the 
scarabaeus has been removed from the throat.” 

The hissing, that was like the hissing of an 
invisible flame, had ceased ; only from time to time 
we heard it as though it passed backwards and 
forwards in the tunnel ; and we stood looking into 
each other’s faces without speaking. 

Presently Colonel Wragge made a great effort 
and braced himself. I heard the sound catch in his 
throat before the words actually became audible. 

“My sister,” he said, very low. And then there 
followed a long pause, broken at length by John 
Silence. 

“ It must be replaced,” he said significantly. 

“ I knew nothing,” the soldier said, forcing himself 
to speak the words he hated saying. “ Absolutely 
nothing.” 

“ It must be returned,” repeated the other, “ if it is 
not now too late. For I fear — I fear ” 

Colonel Wragge made a movement of assent with 
his head. 


THE NEMESIS OF FIRE 


237 


“ It shall be,” he said. 

The place was still as the grave. 

I do not know what it was then that made us all 
three turn round with so sudden a start, for there 
was no sound audible to my ears, at least. 

The doctor was on the point of replacing the lid 
over the mummy, when he straightened up as if he 
had been shot. 

“There’s something coming,” said Colonel Wragge 
under his breath, and the doctor’s eyes, peering down 
the small opening of the tunnel, showed me the 
true direction. 

A distant shuffling noise became distinctly audible 
coming from a point about half-way down the tunnel 
we had so laboriously penetrated. 

“ It’s the sand falling in,” I said, though I knew it 
was foolish. 

“ No,” said the Colonel calmly, in a voice that 
seemed to have the ring of iron, “ I’ve heard it for 
some time past. It is something alive — and it is 
coming nearer.” 

He stared about him with a look of resolution 
that made his face almost noble. The horror in his 
heart was overmastering, yet he stood there prepared 
for anything that might come. 

“There’s no other way out,” John Silence said. 

He leaned the lid against the sand, and waited. 
I knew by the mask-like expression of his face, 
the pallor, and the steadiness of the eyes, that he 
anticipated something that might be very terrible — 
appalling. 

The Colonel and myself stood on either side of 
the opening. I still held my candle and was 
ashamed of the way it shook, dripping the grease 


238 


JOHN SILENCE 


all over me; but the soldier had set his into the 
sand just behind his feet. 

Thoughts of being buried alive, of being smothered 
like rats in a trap, of being caught and done to 
death by some invisible and merciless force we could 
not grapple with, rushed into my mind. Then I 
thought of fire — of suffocation — of being roasted 
alive. The perspiration began to pour from my face. 

“ Steady ! ” came the voice of Dr. Silence to me 
through the vault. 

For five minutes, that seemed fifty, we stood 
waiting, looking from each other’s faces to the 
mummy, and from the mummy to the hole, and all 
the time the shuffling sound, soft and stealthy, came 
gradually nearer. The tension, for me at least, was 
very near the breaking point when at last the cause 
of the disturbance reached the edge. It was hidden 
for a moment just behind the broken rim of soil. 
A jet of sand, shaken by the close vibration, trickled 
down on to the ground ; I have never in my life seen 
anything fall with such laborious leisure. The next 
second, uttering a cry of curious quality, it came into 
view. 

And it was far more distressingly horrible than 
anything I had anticipated. 

For the sight of some Egyptian monster, some god 
of the tombs, or even of some demon of fire, I think 
I was already half prepared ; but when, instead, I 
saw the white visage of Miss Wragge framed in that 
round opening of sand, followed by her body crawling 
on all-fours, her eyes bulging and reflecting the yellow 
glare of the candles, my first instinct was to turn and 
run like a frantic animal seeking a way of escape. 

But Dr. Silence, who seemed no whit surprised, 


THE NEMESIS OF FIRE 


239 


caught my arm and steadied me, and we both saw 
the Colonel then drop upon his knees and come thus 
to a level with his sister. For more than a whole 
minute, as though struck in stone, the two faces 
gazed silently at each other : hers, for all the dread- 
ful emotion in it, more like a gargoyle than anything 
human ; and his, white and blank with an expression 
that was beyond either astonishment or alarm. She 
looked up ; he looked down. It was a picture in a 
nightmare, and the candle, stuck in the sand close 
to the hole, threw upon it the glare of impromptu 
footlights. 

Then John Silence moved forward and spoke in a 
voice that was very low, yet perfectly calm and 
natural. 

“ I am glad you have come,” he said. “ You are the 
one person whose presence at this moment is most re- 
quired. And I hope that you may yet be in time 
to appease the anger of the Fire, and to bring 
peace again to your household, and,” he added lower 
still so that no one heard it but myself, “ safety to 
yourself 

And while her brother stumbled backwards, 
crushing a candle into the sand in his awkwardness, 
the old lady crawled farther into the vaulted chamber 
and slowly rose upon her feet. 

At the sight of the wrapped figure of the mummy 
I was fully prepared to see her scream and faint, but 
on the contrary, to my complete amazement, she 
merely bowed her head and dropped quietly upon 
her knees. Then, after a pause of more than a 
minute, she raised her eyes to the roof and her lips 
began to mutter as in prayer. Her right hand, 
meanwhile, which had been fumbling for some time 


240 


JOHN SILENCE 


at her throat, suddenly came away, and before the 
gaze of all of us she held it out, palm upwards, over 
the grey and ancient figure outstretched below. And 
in it we beheld glistening the green jasper of the 
stolen scarabaeus. 

Her brother, leaning heavily against the wall 
behind, uttered a sound that was half cry, half ex- 
clamation, but John Silence, standing directly in front 
of her, merely fixed his eyes on her and pointed 
downwards to the staring face below. 

“ Replace it,” he said sternly, “ where it belongs.” 

Miss Wragge was kneeling at the feet of the 
mummy when this happened. We three men all 
had our eyes riveted on what followed. Only the 
reader who by some remote chance may have 
witnessed a line of mummies, freshly laid from their 
tombs upon the sand, slowly stir and bend as the 
heat of the Egyptian sun warms their ancient bodies 
into the semblance of life, can form any conception 
of the ultimate horror we experienced when the silent 
figure before us moved in its grave of lead and sand. 
Slowly, before our eyes, it writhed, and, with a faint 
rustling of the immemorial cerements, rose up, and, 
through sightless and bandaged eyes, stared across 
the yellow candle-light at the woman who had 
violated it. 

I tried to move — her brother tried to move — but 
the sand seemed to hold our feet. I tried to cry — 
her brother tried to cry — but the sand seemed to fill 
our lungs and throat. We could only stare — and, 
even so, the sand seemed to rise like a desert storm 
and cloud our vision. . . . 

And when I managed at length to open my 
eyes again, the mummy was lying once more upon 


THE NEMESIS OF FIRE 


241 


its back, motionless, the shrunken and painted face 
upturned towards the ceiling, and the old lady had 
tumbled forward and was lying in the semblance of 
death with her head and arms upon its crumbling body. 

But upon the wrappings of the throat I saw the 
green jasper of the sacred scarabaeus shining again 
like a living eye. 

Colonel Wragge and the doctor recovered them- 
selves long before I did, and I found myself helping 
them clumsily and unintelligently to raise the frail 
body of the old lady, while John Silence carefully re- 
placed the covering over the grave and scraped back 
the sand with his foot, while he issued brief directions. 

I heard his voice as in a dream ; but the journey 
back along that cramped tunnel, weighted by a dead 
woman, blinded with sand, suffocated with heat, was 
in no sense a dream. It took us the best part of 
half an hour to reach the open air. And, even then, 
we had to wait a considerable time for the appearance 
of Dr. Silence. We carried her undiscovered into the 
house and up to her own room. 

“ The mummy will cause no further disturbance,” 
I heard Dr. Silence say to our host later that evening 
as we prepared to drive for the night train, “ provided 
always,” he added significantly, “ that you, and yours, 
cause it no disturbance.” 

It was in a dream, too, that we left. 

“You did not see her face, I know,” he said to me 
as we wrapped our rugs about us in the empty com- 
partment. And when I shook my head, quite unable 
to explain the instinct that had come to me not 
to look, he turned towards me, his face pale, and 
genuinely sad. 

“ Scorched and blasted,” he whispered. 

16 










CASE IV 

SECRET WORSHIP 


*43 


CASE IV 


SECRET WORSHIP 

Harris, the silk merchant, was in South Germany 
on his way home from a business trip when the 
idea came to him suddenly that he would take the 
mountain railway from Strassbourg and run down to 
revisit his old school after an interval of something 
more than thirty years. And it was to this chance 
impulse of the junior partner in Harris Brothers of 
St. Paul’s Churchyard that John Silence owed one 
of the most curious cases of his whole experience, for 
at that very moment he happened to be tramping 
these same mountains with a holiday knapsack, and 
from different points of the compass the two men 
were actually converging towards the same inn. 

Now, deep down in the heart that for thirty years 
had been concerned chiefly with the profitable buying 
and selling of silk, this school had left the imprint 
of its peculiar influence, and, though perhaps un- 
known to Harris, had strongly coloured the whole 
of his subsequent existence. It belonged to the 
deeply religious life of a small Protestant com- 
munity (which it is unnecessary to specify), and his 
father had sent him there at the age of fifteen, 
partly because he would learn the German requisite 

for the conduct of the silk business, and partly 
245 


246 


JOHN SILENCE 


because the discipline was strict, and discipline was 
what his soul and body needed just then more than 
anything else. 

The life, indeed, had proved exceedingly severe, 
and young Harris benefited accordingly ; for though 
corporal punishment was unknown, there was a 
system of mental and spiritual correction which 
somehow made the soul stand proudly erect to 
receive it, while it struck at the very root of the 
fault and taught the boy that his character was 
being cleaned and strengthened, and that he was 
not merely being tortured in a kind of personal 
revenge. 

That was over thirty years ago, when he was 
a dreamy and impressionable youth of fifteen ; and 
now, as the train climbed slowly up the winding 
mountain gorges, his mind travelled back somewhat 
lovingly over the intervening period, and forgotten 
details rose vividly again before him out of the 
shadows. The life there had been very wonderful, 
it seemed to him, in that remote mountain village, 
protected from the tumults of the world by the 
love and worship of the devout Brotherhood that 
ministered to the needs of some hundred boys from 
every country in Europe. Sharply the scenes came 
back to him. He smelt again the long stone 
corridors, the hot pinewood rooms, where the sultry 
hours of summer study were passed with bees 
droning through open windows in the sunshine, 
and German characters struggling in the mind with 
dreams of English lawns — and then the sudden 
awful cry of the master in German — 

“ Harris, stand up ! You sleep ! ” 

And he recalled the dreadful standing motionless 


SECRET WORSHIP 


247 


for an hour, book in hand, while the knees felt like 
wax and the head grew heavier than a cannon-ball. 

The very smell of the cooking came back to him — 
the daily Sauerkraut , the watery chocolate on Sundays, 
the flavour of the stringy meat served twice a week 
at Mittagessen ; and he smiled to think again of the 
half-rations that was the punishment for speaking 
English. The very odour of the milk-bowls, — the 
hot sweet aroma that rose from the soaking peasant- 
bread at the six-o’clock breakfast, — came back to 
him pungently, and he saw the huge Speisesaal 
with the hundred boys in their school uniform, all 
eating sleepily in silence, gulping down the coarse 
bread and scalding milk in terror of the bell that 
would presently cut them short — and, at the far 
end where the masters sat, he saw the narrow slit 
windows with the vistas of enticing field and forest 
beyond. 

And this, in turn, made him think of the great barn- 
like room on the top floor where all slept together 
in wooden cots, and he heard in memory the clamour 
of the cruel bell that woke them on winter mornings 
at five o’clock and summoned them to the stone- 
flagged W ' aschkammer, where boys and masters alike, 
after scanty and icy washing, dressed in complete 
silence. 

From this his mind passed swiftly, with vivid 
picture-thoughts, to other things, and with a passing 
shiver he remembered how the loneliness of never 
being alone had eaten into him, and how every- 
thing — work, meals, sleep, walks, leisure — w r as done 
with his “ division ” of twenty other boys and under 
the eyes of at least two masters. The only solitude 
possible was by asking for half an hour’s practice 


248 


JOHN SILENCE 


in the cell-like music rooms, and Harris smiled to 
himself as he recalled the zeal of his violin studies. 

Then, as the train puffed laboriously through the 
great pine forests that cover these mountains with a 
giant carpet of velvet, he found the pleasanter layers 
of memory giving up their dead, and he recalled with 
admiration the kindness of the masters, whom all 
addressed as Brother, and marvelled afresh at their de- 
votion in burying themselves for years in such a place, 
only to leave it, in most cases, for the still rougher 
life of missionaries in the wild places of the world. 

He thought once more of the still, religious atmos- 
phere that hung over the little forest community 
like a veil, barring the distressful world; of the 
picturesque ceremonies at Easter, Christmas, and 
New Year ; of the numerous feast-days and charming 
little festivals. The Beschehr-Fest , in particular, came 
back to him, — the feast of gifts at Christmas, — when 
the entire community paired off and gave presents, 
many of which had taken weeks to make or the 
savings of many days to purchase. And then he saw 
the midnight ceremony in the church at New Year, 
with the shining face of the Prediger in the pulpit, — 
the village preacher who, on the last night of the old 
year, saw in the empty gallery beyond the organ loft 
the faces of all who were to die in the ensuing twelve 
months, and who at last recognised himself among 
them, and, in the very middle of his sermon, passed 
into a state of rapt ecstasy and burst into a torrent of 
praise. 

Thickly the memories crowded upon him. The 
picture of the small village dreaming its unselfish life 
on the mountain - tops, clean, wholesome, simple, 
searching vigorously for its God, and training hundreds 


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of boys in the grand way, rose up in his mind with 
all the power of an obsession. He felt once more the 
old mystical enthusiasm, deeper than the sea and 
more wonderful than the stars ; he heard again the 
winds sighing from leagues of forest over the red roofs 
in the moonlight ; he heard the Brothers’ voices 
talking of the things beyond this life as though they 
had actually experienced them in the body ; and, as 
he sat in the jolting train, a spirit of unutterable 
longing passed over his seared and tired soul, stirring 
in the depths of him a sea of emotions that he thought 
had long since frozen into immobility. 

And the contrast pained him, — the idealistic dreamer 
then, the man of business now, — so that a spirit of 
unworldly peace and beauty known only to the soul 
in meditation laid its feathered finger upon his heart, 
moving strangely the surface of the waters. 

Harris shivered a little and looked out of the 
window of his empty carriage. The train had long 
passed Hornberg, and far below the streams tumbled 
in white foam down the limestone rocks. In front of 
him, dome upon dome of wooded mountain stood 
against the sky. It was October, and the air was 
cool and sharp, wood-smoke and damp moss ex- 
quisitely mingled in it with the subtle odours of the 
pines. Overhead, between the tips of the highest 
firs, he saw the first stars peeping, and the sky was 
a clean, pale amethyst that seemed exactly the colour 
all these memories clothed themselves with in his 
mind. 

He leaned back in his corner and sighed. He was 
a heavy man, and he had not known sentiment for 
years ; he was a big man, and it took much to move 
him, literally and figuratively ; he was a man in whom 


250 


JOHN SILENCE 


the dreams of God that haunt the soul in youth, 
though overlaid by the scum that gathers in the fight 
for money, had not, as with the majority, utterly died 
the death. 

He came back into this little neglected pocket of 
the years, where so much fine gold had collected and 
lain undisturbed, with all his semi-spiritual emotions 
aquiver ; and, as he watched the mountain-tops come 
nearer, and smelt the forgotten odours of his boyhood, 
something melted on the surface of his soul and left 
him sensitive to a degree he had not known since, 
thirty years before, he had lived here with his 
dreams, his conflicts, and his youthful suffering. 

A thrill ran through him as the train stopped with 
a jolt at a tiny station and he saw the name in large 
black lettering on the grey stone building, and below 
it, the number of metres it stood above the level of 
the sea. 

“ The highest point on the line ! ” he exclaimed. 
“ How well I remember it — Sommerau — Summer 
Meadow. The very next station is mine ! ” 

And, as the train ran downhill with brakes on and 
steam shut off, he put his head out of the window and 
one by one saw the old familiar landmarks in the 
dusk. They stared at him like dead faces in a dream. 
Queer, sharp feelings, half poignant, half sweet, 
stirred in his heart. 

“ There’s the hot, white road we walked along so 
often with the two Briider always at our heels,” he 
thought; “and there, by Jove, is the turn through 
the forest to ‘ Die Galgen ,’ the stone gallows where 
they hanged the witches in olden days 1 ” 

He smiled a little as the train slid past. 

“And there’s the copse where the Lilies of the 


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Valley powdered the ground in spring; and, I 
swear,” — he put his head out with a sudden impulse, 
— “ if that’s not the very clearing where Calame, the 
French boy, chased the swallow-tail with me, and 
Bruder Pagel gave us half-rations for leaving the road 
without permission, and for shouting in our mother 
tongues ! ” And he laughed again as the memories 
came back with a rush, flooding his mind with vivid 
detail. 

The train stopped, and he stood on the grey gravel 
platform like a man in a dream. It seemed half a 
century since he last waited there with corded 
wooden boxes, and got into the train for Strassbourg 
and home after the two years’ exile. Time dropped 
from him like an old garment and he felt a boy 
again. Only, things looked so much smaller than his 
memory of them ; shrunk and dwindled they looked, 
and the distances seemed on a curiously smaller 
scale. 

He made his way across the road to the little 
Gasthaus, and, as he went, faces and figures of former 
schoolfellows, — German, Swiss, Italian, French, 
Russian, — slipped out of the shadowy woods and 
silently accompanied him. They flitted by his side, 
raising their eyes questioningly, sadly, to his. But 
their names he had forgotten. Some of the Brothers, 
too, came with them, and most of these he remem- 
bered by name — Bruder Rost, Bruder Pagel, Bruder 
Schhemann, and the bearded face of the old preacher 
who had seen himself in the haunted gallery of those 
about to die — Bruder Gysin. The dark forest lay 
all about him like a sea that any moment might rush 
with velvet waves upon the scene and sweep all the 
faces away. The air was cool and wonderfully 


252 


JOHN SILENCE 


fragrant, but with every perfumed breath came also 
a pallid memory. . . . 

Yet, in spite of the underlying sadness inseparable 
from such an experience, it was all very interesting, 
and held a pleasure peculiarly its own, so that Harris 
engaged his room and ordered supper feeling well 
pleased with himself, and intending to walk up to the 
old school that very evening. It stood in the centre 
of the community’s village, some four miles distant 
through the forest, and he now recollected for the 
first time that this little Protestant settlement dwelt 
isolated in a section of the country that was other- 
wise Catholic. Crucifixes and shrines surrounded 
the clearing like the sentries of a beleaguring army. 
Once beyond the square of the village, with its few 
acres of field and orchard, the forest crowded up in 
solid phalanxes, and beyond the rim of trees began 
the country that was ruled by the priests of another 
faith. He vaguely remembered, too, that the 
Catholics had showed sometimes a certain hostility 
towards the little Protestant oasis that flourished so 
quietly and benignly in their midst. He had quite 
forgotten this. How trumpery it all seemed now 
with his wide experience of life and his knowledge of 
other countries and the great outside world. It was 
like stepping back, not thirty years, but three hundred. 

There were only two others besides himself at 
supper. One of them, a bearded, middle-aged man 
in tweeds, sat by himself at the far end, and Harris 
kept out of his way because he was English. He 
feared he might be in business, possibly even in the 
silk business, and that he would perhaps talk on the 
subject. The other traveller, however, was a Catholic 
priest. He was a little man who ate his salad with 


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a knife, yet so gently that it was almost inoffensive, 
and it was the sight of “ the cloth ” that recalled his 
memory of the old antagonism. Harris mentioned 
by way of conversation the object of his sentimental 
journey, and the priest looked up sharply at him with 
raised eyebrows and an expression of surprise and 
suspicion that somehow piqued him. He ascribed it 
to his difference of belief. 

“Yes,” went on the silk merchant, pleased to talk 
of what his mind was so full, “ and it was a curious 
experience for an English boy to be dropped down 
into a school of a hundred foreigners. I well re- 
member the loneliness and intolerable Heimweh of 
it at first.” His German was very fluent. 

The priest opposite looked up from his cold veal 
and potato salad and smiled. It was a nice face. 
He explained quietly that he did not belong here, 
but was making a tour of the parishes of Wurttem- 
berg and Baden. 

“ It was a strict life,” added Harris. “We English, 
I remember, used to call it Gefd7ignisleben — prison 
life ! ” 

The face of the other, for some unaccountable 
reason, darkened. After a slight pause, and more 
by way of politeness than because he wished to 
continue the subject, he said quietly — 

“It was a flourishing school in those days, of 

course. Afterwards, I have heard ” He shrugged 

his shoulders slightly, and the odd look — it almost 
seemed a look of alarm — came back into his eyes. 
The sentence remained unfinished. 

Something in the tone of the man seemed to his 
listener uncalled for — in a sense reproachful, singular. 
Harris bridled in spite of himself. 


254 


JOHN SILENCE 


“ It has changed ? ” he asked. “ I can hardly 
believe ” 

“You have not heard, then?” observed the priest 
gently, making a gesture as though to cross him- 
self, yet not actually completing it. “ You have 
not heard what happened there before it was 
abandoned ? ” 

It was very childish, of course, and perhaps he was 
overtired and overwrought in some way, but the 
words and manner of the little priest seemed to him 
so offensive — so disproportionately offensive — that 
he hardly noticed the concluding sentence. He 
recalled the old bitterness and the old antagonism, 
and for a moment he almost lost his temper. 

“Nonsense,” he interrupted with a forced laugh, 
“ Unsinn! You must forgive me, sir, for contradict- 
ing you. But I was a pupil there myself. I was 
at school there. There was no place like it. I 
cannot believe that anything serious could have 
happened to — to take away its character. The 
devotion of the Brothers would be difficult to equal 
anywhere ” 

He broke off suddenly, realising that his voice 
had been raised unduly and that the man at the 
far end of the table might understand German ; and 
at the same moment he looked up and saw that 
this individual’s eyes were fixed upon his face 
intently. They were peculiarly bright. Also they 
were rather wonderful eyes, and the way they met 
his own served in some way he could not understand 
to convey both a reproach and a warning. The 
whole face of the stranger, indeed, made a vivid 
impression upon him, for it was a face, he now 
noticed for the first time, in whose presence one 


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255 


would not willingly have said or done anything 
unworthy. Harris could not explain to himself 
how it was he had not become conscious sooner of 
its presence. 

But he could have bitten off his tongue for having 
so far forgotten himself. The little priest lapsed into 
silence. Only once he said, looking up and speaking 
in a low voice that was not intended to be overheard, 
but that evidently was overheard, “ You will find it 
different.” Presently he rose and left the table with 
a polite bow that included both the others. 

And, after him, from the far end rose also the 
figure in the tweed suit, leaving Harris by himself. 

He sat on for a bit in the darkening room, sipping 
his coffee and smoking his fifteen-pfennig cigar, till 
the girl came in to light the oil lamps. He felt 
vexed with himself for his lapse from good manners, 
yet hardly able to account for it. Most likely, he 
reflected, he had been annoyed because the priest 
had unintentionally changed the pleasant character 
of his dream by introducing a jarring note. Later 
he must seek an opportunity to make amends. At 
present, however, he was too impatient for his walk 
to the school, and he took his stick and hat and 
passed out into the open air. 

And, as he crossed before the Gasthaus, he noticed 
that the priest and the man in the tweed suit were 
engaged already in such deep conversation that they 
hardly noticed him as he passed and raised his hat. 

He started off briskly, well remembering the way, 
and hoping to reach the village in time to have a 
word with one of the Briider. They might even ask 
him in for a cup of coffee. He felt sure of his 
welcome, and the old memories were in full possession 


256 


JOHN SILENCE 


once more. The hour of return was a matter of no 
consequence whatever. 

It was then just after seven o’clock, and the 
October evening was drawing in with chill airs from 
the recesses of the forest. The road plunged straight 
from the railway clearing into its depths, and in a 
very few minutes the trees engulfed him and the 
clack of his boots fell dead and echoless against 
the serried stems of a million firs. It was very 
black; one trunk was hardly distinguishable from 
another. He walked smartly, swinging his holly 
stick. Once or twice he passed a peasant on his 
way to bed, and the guttural “ Gruss Got,” unheard 
for so long, emphasised the passage of time, while 
yet making it seem as nothing. A fresh group of 
pictures crowded his mind. Again the figures of 
former schoolfellows flitted out of the forest and 
kept pace by his side, whispering of the doings of 
long ago. One reverie stepped hard upon the heels 
of another. Every turn in the road, every clearing 
of the forest, he knew, and each in turn brought 
forgotten associations to life. He enjoyed himself 
thoroughly. 

He marched on and on. There was powdered gold 
in the sky till the moon rose, and then a wind of 
faint silver spread silently between the earth and 
stars. He saw the tips of the fir trees shimmer, 
and heard them whisper as the breeze turned their 
needles towards the light. The mountain air was 
indescribably sweet. The road shone like the foam 
of a river through the gloom. White moths flitted 
here and there like silent thoughts across his path, 
and a hundred smells greeted him from the forest 
caverns across the years. 


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257 


Then, when he least expected it, the trees fell away 
abruptly on both sides, and he stood on the edge of 
the village clearing. 

He walked faster. There lay the familiar outlines 
of the houses, sheeted with silver ; there stood the 
trees in the little central square with the fountain 
and small green lawns ; there loomed the shape of 
the church next to the Gasthof der Briidergemeinde ; 
and just beyond, dimly rising into the sky, he saw 
with a sudden thrill the mass of the huge school 
building, blocked castle-like with deep shadows in 
the moonlight, standing square and formidable to 
face him after the silences of more than a quarter 
of a century. 

He passed quickly down the deserted village street 
and stopped close beneath its shadow, staring up at 
the walls that had once held him prisoner for two 
years — two unbroken years of discipline and home- 
sickness. Memories and emotions surged through 
his mind ; for the most vivid sensations of his youth 
had focused about this spot, and it was here he had 
first begun to live and learn values. Not a single 
footstep broke the silence, though lights glimmered 
here and there through cottage windows ; but when 
he looked up at the high walls of the school, draped 
now in shadow, he easily imagined that well-known 
faces crowded to the windows to greet him — closed 
windows that really reflected only moonlight and the 
gleam of stars. 

This, then, was the old school building, standing 
foursquare to the world, with its shuttered windows, 
its lofty, tiled roof, and the spiked lightning - 
conductors pointing like black and taloned fingers 
from the corners. For a long time he stood and 

17 


258 


JOHN SILENCE 


stared. Then, presently, he came to himself again, 
and realised to his joy that a light still shone in the 
windows of the Bruderstube . 

He turned from the road and passed through the 
iron railings; then climbed the twelve stone steps 
and stood facing the black wooden door with the 
heavy bars of iron, a door he had once loathed and 
dreaded with the hatred and passion of an imprisoned 
soul, but now looked upon tenderly with a sort of 
boyish delight. 

Almost timorously he pulled the rope and listened 
with a tremor of excitement to the clanging of the 
bell deep within the building. And the long-for- 
gotten sound brought the past before him with such 
a vivid sense of reality that he positively shivered. 
It was like the magic bell in the fairy-tale that rolls 
back the curtain of Time and summons the figures 
from the shadows of the dead. He had never felt 
so sentimental in his life. It was like being young 
again. And, at the same time, he began to bulk 
rather large in his own eyes with a certain spurious 
importance. He was a big man from the world of 
strife and action. In this little place of peaceful 
dreams would he, perhaps, not cut something of a 
figure ? 

“ I’ll try once more,” he thought after a long pause, 
seizing the iron bell-rope, and was just about to pull 
it when a step sounded on the stone passage within, 
and the huge door slowly swung open. 

A tall man with a rather severe cast of countenance 
stood facing him in silence. 

“ I must apologise — it is somewhat late,” he began 
a trifle pompously, “ but the fact is I am an old pupil. 
I have only just arrived and really could not restrain 


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myself.” His German seemed not quite so fluent as 
usual. “ My interest is so great. I was here in *70.” 

The other opened the door wider and at once 
bowed him in with a smile of genuine welcome. 

“ I am Bruder Kalkmann,” he said quietly in a 
deep voice. “ I myself was a master here about that 
time. It is a great pleasure always to welcome a 
former pupil.” He looked at him very keenly for 
a few seconds, and then added, “ I think, too, it is 
splendid of you to come — very splendid.” 

“ It is a very great pleasure,” Harris replied, de- 
lighted with his reception. 

The dimly-lighted corridor with its flooring of grey 
stone, and the familiar sound of a German voice 
echoing through it, — with the peculiar intonation the 
Brothers always used in speaking, — all combined to 
lift him bodily, as it were, into the dream-atmosphere 
of long-forgotten days. He stepped gladly into the 
building and the door shut with the familiar thunder 
that completed the reconstruction of the past. He 
almost felt the old sense of imprisonment, of aching 
nostalgia, of having lost his liberty. 

Harris sighed involuntarily and turned towards his 
host, who returned his smile faintly and then led the 
way down the corridor. 

“The boys have retired,” he explained, “and, as 
you remember, we keep early hours here. But, at 
least, you will join us for a little while in the 
Bruderstube and enjoy a cup of coffee.” This was 
precisely what the silk merchant had hoped, and he 
accepted with an alacrity that he intended to be 
tempered by graciousness. “And tomorrow,” con- 
tinued the Bruder, “you must come and spend a 
whole day with us. You may even find acquaint- 


26 o 


JOHN SILENCE 


ances, for several pupils of your day have come back 
here as masters.” 

For one brief second there passed into the man’s 
eyes a look that made the visitor start. But it 
vanished as quickly as it came. It was impossible to 
define. Harris convinced himself it was the effect of 
a shadow cast by the lamp they had just passed on 
the wall. He dismissed it from his mind. 

“You are very kind, I’m sure,” he said politely. 
“ It is perhaps a greater pleasure to me than you can 
imagine to see the place again. Ah,” — he stopped 
short opposite a door with the upper half of glass 
and peered in — “surely there is one of the music 
rooms where I used to practise the violin. How it 
comes back to me after all these years ! ” 

Bruder Kalkmann stopped indulgently, smiling, to 
allow his guest a moment’s inspection. 

“You still have the boys’ orchestra? I remember 
I used to play ‘ zweite Geige' in it. Bruder 
Schliemann conducted at the piano. Dear me, I can 

see him now with his long black hair and — and ” 

He stopped abruptly. Again the odd, dark look 
passed over the stern face of his companion. For an 
instant it seemed curiously familiar. 

“ We still keep up the pupils’ orchestra,” he said, 

“but Bruder Schliemann, I am sorry to say ” 

he hesitated an instant, and then added, “ Bruder 
Schliemann is dead.” 

“ Indeed, indeed,” said Harris quickly. “ I am 
sorry to hear it.” He was conscious of a faint feeling 
of distress, but whether it arose from the news of his 
old music teacher’s death, or — from something else 
— he could not quite determine. He gazed down 
the corridor that lost itself among shadows. In the 


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street and village everything had seemed so much 
smaller than he remembered, but here, inside the 
school building, everything seemed so much bigger. 
The corridor was loftier and longer, more spacious 
and vast, than the mental picture he had preserved. 
His thoughts wandered dreamily for an instant. 

He glanced up and saw the face of the Bruder 
watching him with a smile of patient indulgence. 

“ Your memories possess you,” he observed gently, 
and the stern look passed into something almost 
pitying. 

“You are right,” returned the man of silk, “they 
do. This was the most wonderful period of my 

whole life in a sense. At the time I hated it ” 

He hesitated, not wishing to hurt the Brother’s 
feelings. 

“According to English ideas it seemed strict, of 
course,” the other said persuasively, so that he went on. 

“ Yes, partly that; and partly the ceaseless 

nostalgia, and the solitude which came from never 
being really alone. In English schools the boys 
enjoy peculiar freedom, you know.” 

Bruder Kalkmann, he saw, was listening intently. 

“But it produced one result that I have never 
wholly lost,” he continued self-consciously, “and 
am grateful for.” 

“ Ach ! Wie so , denn ? ” 

“The constant inner pain threw me headlong into 
your religious life, so that the whole force of my 
being seemed to project itself towards the search for 
a deeper satisfaction — a real resting-place for the 
soul. During my two years here I yearned for God 
in my boyish way as perhaps I have never yearned 
for anything since. Moreover, I have never quite 


262 


JOHN SILENCE 


lost that sense of peace and inward joy which accom- 
panied the search. I can never quite forget this 
school and the deep things it taught me.” 

He paused at the end of his long speech, and a 
brief silence fell between them. He feared he had 
said too much, or expressed himself clumsily in the 
foreign language, and when Bruder Kalkmann laid 
a hand upon his shoulder, he gave a little involuntary 
start. 

“ So that my memories perhaps do possess me 
rather strongly,” he added apologetically ; “ and this 
long corridor, these rooms, that barred and gloomy 

front door, all touch chords that — that ” His 

German failed him and he glanced at his companion 
with an explanatory smile and gesture. But the 
brother had removed the hand from his shoulder 
and was standing with his back to him, looking 
down the passage. 

“Naturally, naturally so,” he said hastily without 
turning round. “ Es ist dock selbstverstandlich. We 
shall all understand.” 

Then he turned suddenly, and Harris saw that 
his face had turned most oddly and disagreeably 
sinister. It may only have been the shadows again 
playing their tricks with the wretched oil lamps on 
the wall, for the dark expression passed instantly 
as they retraced their steps down the corridor, but 
the Englishman somehow got the impression that 
he had said something to give offence, something 
that was not quite to the other’s taste. Opposite 
the door of the Bruderstube they stopped. Harris 
realised that it was late and he had possibly stayed 
talking too long. He made a tentative effort to 
leave, but his companion would not hear of it. 


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263 


‘‘You must have a cup of coffee with us,” he said 
firmly as though he meant it, “ and my colleagues 
will be delighted to see you. Some of them will 
remember you, perhaps.” 

The sound of voices came pleasantly through 
the door, men’s voices talking together. Bruder 
Kalkmann turned the handle and they entered a 
room ablaze with light and full of people. 

“Ah, — but your name?” he whispered, bending 
down to catch the reply; “you have not told me 
your name yet.” 

“ Harris,” said the Englishman quickly as they 
went in. He felt nervous as he crossed the threshold, 
but ascribed the momentary trepidation to the fact 
that he was breaking the strictest rule of the whole 
establishment, which forbade a boy under severest 
penalties to come near this holy of holies where the 
masters took their brief leisure. 

“ Ah, yes, of course — Harris,” repeated the other 
as though he remembered it. “ Come in, Herr 
Harris, come in, please. Your visit will be immensely 
appreciated. It is really very fine, very wonderful 
of you to have come in this way.” 

The door closed behind them and, in the sudden 
light which made his sight swim for a moment, the 
exaggeration of the language escaped his attention. 
He heard the voice of Bruder Kalkmann introducing 
him. He spoke very loud, indeed, unnecessarily, — 
absurdly loud, Harris thought. 

“ Brothers,” he announced, “ it is my pleasure and 
privilege to introduce to you Herr Harris from 
England. He has just arrived to make us a little 
visit, and I have already expressed to him on 
behalf of us all the satisfaction we feel that he is 


264 JOHN SILENCE 

here. He was, as you remember, a pupil in the 
year ’70.” 

It was a very formal, a very German introduction, 
but Harris rather liked it. It made him feel im- 
portant and he appreciated the tact that made it 
almost seem as though he had been expected. 

The black forms rose and bowed; Harris bowed; 
Kalkmann bowed. Every one was very polite and 
very courtly. The room swam with moving figures ; 
the light dazzled him after the gloom of the corridor ; 
there was thick cigar smoke in the atmosphere. He 
took the chair that was offered to him between two 
of the Brothers, and sat down, feeling vaguely that 
his perceptions w r ere not quite as keen and accurate 
as usual. He felt a trifle dazed perhaps, and the 
spell of the past came strongly over him, confusing 
the immediate present and making everything 
dwindle oddly to the dimensions of long ago. He 
seemed to pass under the mastery of a great mood 
that was a composite reproduction of all the moods 
of his forgotten boyhood. 

Then he pulled himself together with a sharp effort 
and entered into the conversation that had begun 
again to buzz round him. Moreover, he entered into 
it with keen pleasure, for the Brothers — there were 
perhaps a dozen of them in the little room — treated 
him with a charm of manner that speedily made him 
feel one of themselves. This, again, was a very 
subtle delight to him. He felt that he had stepped 
out of the greedy, vulgar, self-seeking world, the 
world of silk and markets and profit-making — stepped 
into the cleaner atmosphere where spiritual ideals 
were paramount and life was simple and devoted. 
It all charmed him inexpressibly, so that he realised 


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26 5 


— yes, in a sense — the degradation of his twenty 
years’ absorption in business. This keen atmosphere 
under the stars where men thought only of their 
souls, and of the souls of others, was too rarefied for 
the world he was now associated with. He found 
himself making comparisons to his own disadvantage, 
— comparisons with the mystical little dreamer that 
had stepped thirty years before from the stern peace 
of this devout community, and the man of the world 
that he had since become, — and the contrast made 
him shiver with a keen regret and something like 
self-contempt. 

He glanced round at the other faces floating 
towards him through tobacco smoke — this acrid 
cigar smoke he remembered so well : how keen they 
were, how strong, placid, touched with the nobility of 
great aims and unselfish purposes. At one or two he 
looked particularly. He hardly knew why. They 
rather fascinated him. There was something so very 
stern and uncompromising about them, and some- 
thing, too, oddly, subtly, familiar, that yet just eluded 
him. But whenever their eyes met his own they 
held undeniable welcome in them; and some held 
mo re — a kind of perplexed admiration, he thought, 
something that was between esteem and deference. 
This note of respect in all the faces was very flattering 
to his vanity. 

Coffee was served presently, made by a black- 
haired Brother who sat in the corner by the piano 
and bore a marked resemblance to Bruder Schliemann, 
the musical director of thirty years ago. Harris ex- 
changed bows with him when he took the cup from 
his white hands, which he noticed were like the hands 
of a woman. He lit a cigar, offered to him by his 


266 


JOHN SILENCE 


neighbour, with whom he was chatting delightfully, 
and who, in the glare of the lighted match, reminded 
him sharply for a moment of Bruder Pagel, his former 
room-master. 

“ Es ist wirklich merkwiirdig” he said, “how many 
resemblances I see, or imagine. It is really very 
curious ! ” 

“Yes,” replied the other, peering at him over his 
coffee cup, “ the spell of the place is wonderfully 
strong. I can well understand that the old faces rise 
before your mind’s eye — almost to the exclusion of 
ourselves perhaps.” 

They both laughed pleasantly. It was soothing 
to find his mood understood and appreciated. And 
they passed on to talk of the mountain village, its 
isolation, its remoteness from worldly life, its peculiar 
fitness for meditation and worship, and for spiritual 
development — of a certain kind. 

“And your coming back in this way, Herr Harris, 
has pleased us all so much,” joined in the Bruder on 
his left. “We esteem you for it most highly. We 
honour you for it.” 

Harris made a deprecating gesture. “ I fear, for 
my part, it is only a very selfish pleasure,” he said a 
trifle unctuously. 

“ Not all would have had the courage,” added the 
one who resembled Bruder Pagel. 

“You mean,” said Harris, a little puzzled, “the 
disturbing memories ?” 

Bruder Pagel looked at him steadily, with un- 
mistakable admiration and respect. “ I mean that 
most men hold so strongly to life, and can give up so 
little for their beliefs,” he said gravely. 

The Englishman felt slightly uncomfortable. These 


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267 


worthy men really made too much of his sentimental 
journey. Besides, the talk was getting a little out of 
his depth. He hardly followed it. 

“ The worldly life still has some charms for me,” he 
replied smilingly, as though to indicate that sainthood 
was not yet quite within his grasp. 

“ All the more, then, must we honour you for so 
freely coming,” said the Brother on his left; “so 
unconditionally ! ” 

A pause followed, and the silk merchant felt 
relieved when the conversation took a more general 
turn, although he noted that it never travelled very 
far from the subject of his visit and the wonderful 
situation of the lonely village for men who wished to 
develop their spiritual powers and practise the rites 
of a high worship. Others joined in, complimenting 
him on his knowledge of the language, making him 
feel utterly at his ease, yet at the same time a little 
uncomfortable by the excess of their admiration. 
After all, it was such a very small thing to do, this 
sentimental journey. 

The time passed along quickly; the coffee was 
excellent, the cigars soft and of the nutty flavour he 
loved. At length, fearing to outstay his welcome, he 
rose reluctantly to take his leave. But the others 
would not hear of it. It was not often a former 
pupil returned to visit them in this simple, unaffected 
way. The night was young. If necessary they could 
even find him a corner in the great Schlafzimmer 
upstairs. He was easily persuaded to stay a little 
longer. Somehow he had become the centre of the 
little party. He felt pleased, flattered, honoured. 

“And perhaps Bruder Schliemann will play 
something for us — now.” 


268 


JOHN SILENCE 


It was Kalkmann speaking, and Harris started 
visibly as he heard the name, and saw the black- 
haired man by the piano turn with a smile. For 
Schliemann was the name of his old music director, 
who was dead. Could this be his son ? They were 
so exactly alike. 

“ If Bruder Meyer has not put his Amati to bed, I 
will accompany him,” said the musician suggestively, 
looking across at a man whom Harris had not yet 
noticed, and who, he now saw, was the very image 
of a former master of that name. 

Meyer rose and excused himself with a little bow, 
and the Englishman quickly observed that he had 
a peculiar gesture as though his neck had a false 
join on to the body just below the collar and feared 
it might break. Meyer of old had this trick of 
movement. He remembered how the boys used to 
copy it. 

He glanced sharply from face to face, feeling as 
though some silent, unseen process were changing 
everything about him. All the faces seemed oddly 
familiar. Pagel, the Brother he had been talking 
with, was of course the image of Pagel, his former 
room-master; and Kalkmann, he now realised for 
the first time, was the very twin of another master 
whose name he had quite forgotten, but whom he 
used to dislike intensely in the old days. And, 
through the smoke, peering at him from the corners 
of the room, he saw that all the Brothers about him 
had the faces he had known and lived with long 
ago — Rost, Fluheim, Meinert, Rigel, Gysin. 

He stared hard, suddenly grown more alert, and 
everywhere saw, or fancied he saw, strange likenesses, 
ghostly resemblances, — more, the identical faces of 


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269 


years ago. There was something queer about it all, 
something not quite right, something that made 
him feel uneasy. He shook himself, mentally and 
actually, blowing the smoke from before his eyes 
with a long breath, and as he did so he noticed to 
his dismay that every one was fixedly staring. They 
were watching him. 

This brought him to his senses. As an English- 
man, and a foreigner, he did not wish to be rude, or 
to do anything to make himself foolishly conspicuous 
and spoil the harmony of the evening. He was a 
guest, and a privileged guest at that. Besides, the 
music had already begun. Bruder Schliemann’s 
long white fingers were caressing the keys to some 
purpose. 

He subsided into his chair and smoked with half- 
closed eyes that yet saw everything. 

But the shudder had established itself in his being, 
and, whether he would or not, it kept repeating 
itself. As a town, far up some inland river, feels 
the pressure of the distant sea, so he became aware 
that mighty forces from somewhere beyond his ken 
were urging themselves up against his soul in this 
smoky little room. He began to feel exceedingly 
ill at ease. 

And as the music filled the air his mind began to 
clear. Like a lifted veil there rose up something 
that had hitherto obscured his vision. The words 
of the priest at the railway inn flashed across his 
brain unbidden: “You will find it different.” And 
also, though why he could not tell, he saw mentally 
the strong, rather wonderful eyes of that other guest 
at the supper-table, the man who had overhead 
his conversation, and had later got into earnest talk 


270 


JOHN SILENCE 


with the priest. He took out his watch and stole 
a glance at it. Two hours had slipped by. It was 
already eleven o’clock. 

Schliemann, meanwhile, utterly absorbed in his 
music, was playing a solemn measure. The piano 
sang marvellously. The power of a great conviction, 
the simplicity of great art, the vital spiritual message 
of a soul that had found itself — all this, and more, 
were in the chords, and yet somehow the music was 
what can only be described as impure — atrociously 
and diabolically impure. And the piece itself, although 
Harris did not recognise it as anything familiar, was 
surely the music of a Mass — huge, majestic, sombre? 
It stalked through the smoky room with slow power, 
like the passage of something that was mighty, yet 
profoundly intimate, and as it went there stirred into 
each and every face about him the signature of the 
enormous forces of which it was the audible symbol. 
The countenances round him turned sinister, but 
not idly, negatively sinister: they grew dark with 
purpose. He suddenly recalled the face of Bruder 
Kalkmann in the corridor earlier in the evening. 
The motives of their secret souls rose to the eyes, 
and mouths, and foreheads, and hung there for all 
to see like the black banners of an assembly of ill- 
starred and fallen creatures. Demons — was the 
horrible word that flashed through his brain like a 
sheet of fire. 

When this sudden discovery leaped out upon him, 
for a moment he lost his self-control. Without 
waiting to think and weigh his extraordinary 
impression, he did a very foolish but a very 
natural thing. Feeling himself irresistibly driven 
by the sudden stress to some kind of action, he 


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271 


sprang to his feet — and screamed! To his own 
utter amazement he stood up and shrieked 
aloud ! 

But no one stirred. No one, apparently, took 
the slightest notice of his absurdly wild behaviour. 
It was almost as if no one but himself had heard the 
scream at all — as though the music had drowned it 
and swallowed it up — as though after all perhaps he 
had not really screamed as loudly as he imagined, 
or had not screamed at all. 

Then, as he glanced at the motionless, dark faces 
before him, something of utter cold passed into his 
being, touching his very soul. . . . All emotion 
cooled suddenly, leaving him like a receding tide. 
He sat down again, ashamed, mortified, angry with 
himself for behaving like a fool and a boy. And the 
music, meanwhile, continued to issue from the white 
and snake-like fingers of Bruder Schliemann, as 
poisoned wine might issue from the weirdly-fashioned 
necks of antique phials. 

And, with the rest of them, Harris drank it in. 

Forcing himself to believe that he had been the 
victim of some kind of illusory perception, he 
vigorously restrained his feelings. Then the music 
presently ceased, and every one applauded and began 
to talk at once, laughing, changing seats, compli- 
menting the player, and behaving naturally and 
easily as though nothing out of the way had 
happened. The faces appeared normal once more. 
The Brothers crowded round their visitor, and he 
joined in their talk and even heard himself thanking 
the gifted musician. 

But, at the same time, he found himself edging 
towards the door, nearer and nearer, changing his 


272 


JOHN SILENCE 


chair when possible, and joining the groups that 
stood closest to the way of escape. 

“ I must thank you all tausendmal for my little 
reception and the great pleasure — the very great 
honour you have done me,” he began in decided 
tones at length, “ but I fear I have trespassed far too 
long already on your hospitality. Moreover, I have 
some distance to walk to my inn.” 

A chorus of voices greeted his words. They 
would not hear of his going, — at least not without 
first partaking of refreshment. They produced 
pumpernickel from one cupboard, and rye-bread and 
sausage from another, and all began to talk again 
and eat. More coffee was made, fresh cigars lighted, 
and Bruder Meyer took out his violin and began to 
tune it softly. 

“There is always a bed upstairs if Herr Harris 
will accept it,” said one. 

“ And it is difficult to find the way out now, for all 
the doors are locked,” laughed another loudly. 

“ Let us take our simple pleasures as they come,” 
cried a third. “ Bruder Harris will understand how 
we appreciate the honour of this last visit of his.” 

They made a dozen excuses. They all laughed, 
as though the politeness of their words was but 
formal, and veiled thinly — more and more thinly — a 
very different meaning. 

“And the hour of midnight draws near,” added 
Bruder Kalkmann with a charming smile, but in 
a voice that sounded to the Englishman like the 
grating of iron hinges. 

Their German seemed to him more and more 
difficult to understand. He noted that they called 
him “ Bruder ” too, classing him as one of themselves. 


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273 


And then suddenly he had a flash of keener percep- 
tion, and realised with a creeping of his flesh that he 
had all along misinterpreted — grossly misinterpreted 
all they had been saying. They had talked about 
the beauty of the place^ its isolation and remoteness 
from the world, its peculiar fitness for certain kinds 
of spiritual development and worship — yet hardly, 
he now grasped, in the sense in which he had taken 
the words. They had meant something different. 
Their spiritual powers, their desire for loneliness, 
their passion for worship, were not the powers, the 
solitude, or the worship that he meant and under- 
stood. He was playing a part in some horrible 
masquerade ; he was among men who cloaked their 
lives with religion in order to follow their real 
purposes unseen of men. 

What did it all mean? How had he blundered 
into so equivocal a situation ? Had he blundered 
into it at all? Had he not rather been led into 
it, deliberately led? His thoughts grew dreadfully 
confused, and his confidence in himself began to 
fade. And why, he suddenly thought again, were 
they so impressed by the mere fact of his coming 
to revisit his old school? What was it they so 
admired and wondered at in his simple act? Why 
did they set such store upon his having the courage 
to come, to “ give himself so freely,” “ uncondition- 
ally ” as one of them had expressed it with such a 
mockery of exaggeration ? 

Fear stirred in his heart most horribly, and he 
found no answer to any of his questionings. Only 
one thing he now understood quite clearly: it was 
their purpose to keep him here. They did not 
intend that he should go. And from this moment 
18 


274 


JOHN SILENCE 


he realised that they were sinister, formidable 
and, in some way he had yet to discover, inim- 
ical to himself, inimical to his life. And the 
phrase one of them had used a moment ago — 
“this last visit of his” — rose before his eyes in 
letters of flame. 

Harris was not a man of action, and had never 
known in all the course of his career what it meant 
to be in a situation of real danger. He was not 
necessarily a coward, though, perhaps, a man of 
untried nerve. He realised at last plainly that he 
was in a very awkward predicament indeed, and 
that he had to deal with men who were utterly 
in earnest. What their intentions were he only 
vaguely guessed. His mind, indeed, was too con- 
fused for definite ratiocination, and he was only 
able to follow blindly the strongest instincts that 
moved in him. It never occurred to him that the 
Brothers might all be mad, or that he himself 
might have temporarily lost his senses and be 
suffering under some terrible delusion. In fact, 
nothing occurred to him — he realised nothing — 
except that he meant to escape — and the quicker 
the better. A tremendous revulsion of feeling set 
in and overpowered him. 

Accordingly, without further protest for the 
moment, he ate his pumpernickel and drank his 
coffee, talking meanwhile as naturally and pleasantly 
as he could, and when a suitable interval had 
passed, he rose to his feet and announced once 
more that he must now take his leave. He spoke 
very quietly, but very decidedly. No one hearing 
him could doubt that he meant what he said. He 
had got very close to the door by this time. 


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275 


“I regret,” he said, using his best German, and 
speaking to a hushed room, “that our pleasant 
evening must come to an end, but it is now time 
for me to wish you all good-night.” And then, 
as no one said anything, he added, though with a 
trifle less assurance, “ And I thank you all most 
sincerely for your hospitality.” 

“ On the contrary,” replied Kalkmann instantly, 
rising from his chair and ignoring the hand the 
Englishman had stretched out to him, “ it is we who 
have to thank you ; and we do so most gratefully 
and sincerely.” 

And at the same moment at least half a dozen 
of the Brothers took up their position between himself 
and the door. 

“You are very good to say so,” Harris replied 
as firmly as he could manage, noticing this move- 
ment out of the corner of his eye, “ but really I had 
no conception that — my little chance visit could 
have afforded you so much pleasure.” He moved 
another step nearer the door, but Bruder Schliemann 
came across the room quickly and stood in front 
of him. His attitude was uncompromising. A 
dark and terrible expression had come into his 
face. 

“ But it was not by chance that you came, Bruder 
Harris,” he said so that all the room could hear; 
“surely we have not misunderstood your presence 
here ? ” He raised his black eyebrows. 

“ No, no,” the Englishman hastened to reply, 
“ I was — I am delighted to be here. I told you 
what pleasure it gave me to find myself among 
you. Do not misunderstand me, I beg.” His 
voice faltered a little, and he had difficulty in 


2 76 


JOHN SILENCE 


finding the words. More and more, too, he had 
difficulty in understanding their words. 

“ Of course,” interposed Bruder Kalkmann in 
his iron bass, “ we have not misunderstood. You 
have come back in the spirit of true and unselfish 
devotion. You offer yourself freely, and we all 
appreciate it. It is your willingness and nobility 
that have so completely won our veneration and 
respect.” A faint murmur of applause ran round 
the room. “ What we all delight in — what our 
great Master will especially delight in — is the 
value of your spontaneous and voluntary ” 

He used a word Harris did not understand. He 
said “ Opfer .” The bewildered Englishman searched 
his brain for the translation, and searched in vain. 
For the life of him he could not remember what it 
meant. But the word, for all his inability to translate 
it, touched his soul with ice. It was worse, far worse, 
than anything he had imagined. He felt like a lost, 
helpless creature, and all power to fight sank out of 
him from that moment. 

“ It is magnificent to be such a willing ” added 

Schliemann, sidling up to him with a dreadful leer on 
his face. He made use of the same word — “ Opfer:' 

“ God ! What could it all mean ? “ Offer himself!” 

“True spirit of devotion!” “Willing,” “unselfish,” 
“magnificent!” Opfer , Opfer , Opfer l What in the 
name of heaven did it mean, that strange, mysterious 
word that struck such terror into his heart ? 

He made a valiant effort to keep his presence of 
mind and hold his nerves steady. Turning, he saw 
that Kalkmann’s face was a dead white. Kalkmann ! 
He understood that well enough. Kalkmann meant 
“ Man of Chalk ” ; he knew that. But what did 


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277 


“ Opfer" mean? That was the real key to the 
situation. Words poured through his disordered 
mind in an endless stream — unusual, rare words he 
had perhaps heard but once in his life — while “ Opfer ,” 
a word in common use, entirely escaped him. What 
an extraordinary mockery it all was ! 

Then Kalkmann, pale as death, but his face hard 
as iron, spoke a few low words that he did not catch, 
and the Brothers standing by the walls at once turned 
the lamps down so that the room became dim. In 
the half light he could only just discern their faces 
and movements. 

“ It is time,” he heard Kalkmann’s remorseless 
voice continue just behind him. “ The hour of mid- 
night is at hand. Let us prepare. He comes ! He 
comes ; Bruder Asmodelius comes ! ” His voice rose 
to a chant. 

And the sound of that name, for some extra- 
ordinary reason, was terrible — utterly terrible; so 
that Harris shook from head to foot as he heard 
it. Its utterance filled the air like soft thunder, 
and a hush came over the whole room. Forces 
rose all about him, transforming the normal into 
the horrible, and the spirit of craven fear ran through 
all his being, bringing him to the verge of collapse. 

Asmodelius l Asmodelius l The name was ap- 
palling. For he understood at last to whom it 
referred and the meaning that lay between its great 
syllables. At the same instant, too, he suddenly 
understood the meaning of that unremembered word. 
The import of the word “Opfer" flashed upon his 
soul like a message of death. 

He thought of making a wild effort to reach the 
door, but the weakness of his trembling knees, and 


278 


JOHN SILENCE 


the row of black figures that stood between, dissuaded 
him at once. He would have screamed for help, but 
remembering the emptiness of the vast building, and 
the loneliness of the situation, he understood that no 
help could come that way, and he kept his lips closed. 
He stood still and did nothing. But he knew now 
what was coming. 

Two of the brothers approached and took him 
gently by the arm. 

“ Bruder Asmodelius accepts you,” they whispered ; 
“ are you ready ? ” 

Then he found his tongue and tried to speak. 

‘ But what have I to do with this Bruder Asm — 

Asmo ?” he stammered, a desperate rush of 

words crowding vainly behind the halting tongue. 

The name refused to pass his lips. He could not 
pronounce it as they did. He could not pronounce it 
at all. His sense of helplessness then entered the 
acute stage, for this inability to speak the name 
produced a fresh sense of quite horrible confusion in 
his mind, and he became extraordinarily agitated. 

“ I came here for a friendly visit,” he tried to say 
with a great effort, but, to his intense dismay, he heard 
his voice saying something quite different, and actually 
making use of that very word they had all used : “ I 
came here as a willing Opfer ,” he heard his own voice 
say, “ and I am quite ready? 

He was lost beyond all recall now! Not alone 
his mind, but the very muscles of his body had 
passed out of control. He felt that he was hover- 
ing on the confines of a phantom or demon- 
world, — a world in which the name they had 
spoken constituted the Master-name, the word of 
ultimate power. 


SECRET WORSHIP 


279 

What followed he heard and saw as in a night- 
mare. 

“ In the half light that veils all truth, let us prepare 
to worship and adore,” chanted Schliemann, who had 
preceded him to the end of the room. 

“ In the mists that protect our faces before the 
Black Throne, let us make ready the willing victim,” 
echoed Kalkmann in his great bass. 

They raised their faces, listening expectantly, as a 
roaring sound, like the passing of mighty projectiles, 
filled the air, far, far away, very wonderful, very 
forbidding. The walls of the room trembled. 

“ He comes ! He comes ! He comes ! ” chanted 
the Brothers in chorus. 

The sound of roaring died away, and an atmos- 
phere of still and utter cold established itself over all. 
Then Kalkmann, dark and unutterably stern, turned 
in the dim light and faced the rest. 

“ Asmodelius, our Hauptbruder , is about us,” he 
cried in a voice that even while it shook was yet 
a voice of iron; “Asmodelius is about us. Make 
ready.” 

There followed a pause in which no one stirred or 
spoke. A tall Brother approached the Englishman ; 
but Kalkmann held up his hand. 

“Let the eyes remain uncovered,” he said, “in 
honour of so freely giving himself.” And to his 
horror Harris then realised for the first time that his 
hands were already fastened to his sides. 

The Brother retreated again silently, and in the 
pause that followed all the figures about him dropped 
to their knees, leaving him standing alone, and as 
they dropped, in voices hushed with mingled rever- 
ence and awe, they cried softly, odiously, appallingly, 


JOHN SILENCE 


280 

the name of the Being whom they momentarily 
expected to appear. 

Then, at the end of the room, where the windows 
seemed to have disappeared so that he saw the 
stars, there rose into view far up against the night 
sky, grand and terrible, the outline of a man. A 
kind of grey glory enveloped it so that it resembled 
a steel-cased statue, immense, imposing, horrific in its 
distant splendour ; while, at the same time, the face 
was so spiritually mighty, yet so proudly, so austerely 
sad, that Harris felt as he stared, that the sight was 
more than his eyes could meet, and that in another 
moment the power of vision would fail him altogether, 
and he must sink into utter nothingness. 

So remote and inaccessible hung this figure that 
it was impossible to gauge anything as to its size, 
yet at the same time so strangly close, that when the 
grey radiance from its mightily broken visage, august 
and mournful, beat down upon his soul, pulsing like 
some dark star with the powers of spiritual evil, he 
felt almost as though he were looking into a face no 
farther removed from him in space than the face of 
any one of the Brothers who stood by his side. 

And then the room filled and trembled with sounds 
that Harris understood full well were the failing 
voices of others who had preceded him in a long series 
down the years. There came first a plain, sharp cry, 
as of a man in the last anguish, choking for his 
breath, and yet, with the very final expiration of it, 
breathing the name of the Worship — of the dark 
Being who rejoiced to hear it. The cries of the 
strangled ; the short, running gasp of the suffocated ; 
and the smothered gurgling of the tightened throat, 
all these, and more, echoed back and forth between 


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281 


the walls, the very walls in which he now stood a 
prisoner, a sacrificial victim. The cries, too, not 
alone of the broken bodies, but — far worse — of 
beaten, broken souls. And as the ghastly chorus rose 
and fell, there came also the faces of the lost and 
unhappy creatures to whom they belonged, and, 
against that curtain of pale grey light, he saw 
float past him in the air, an array of white and 
piteous human countenances that seemed to beckon 
and gibber at him as though he were already one of 
themselves. 

Slowly, too, as the voices rose, and the pallid crew 
sailed past, that giant form of grey descended from 
the sky and approached the room that contained the 
worshippers and their prisoner. Hands rose and 
sank about him in the darkness, and he felt that he 
was being draped in other garments than his own ; 
a circlet of ice seemed to run about his head, while 
round the waist, enclosing the fastened arms, he 
felt a girdle tightly drawn. At last, about his very 
throat, there ran a soft and silken touch which, better 
than if there had been full light, and a mirror held to 
his face, he understood to be the cord of sacrifice — 
and of death. 

At this moment the Brothers, still prostrate upon 
the floor, began again their mournful, yet impassioned 
chanting, and as they did so a strange thing happened. 
For, apparently without moving or altering its position, 
the huge Figure seemed, at once and suddenly, to be 
inside the room, almost beside him, and to fill the 
space around him to the exclusion of all else. 

He was now beyond all ordinary sensations of fear, 
only a drab feeling as of death — the death of the 
sou l — stirred in his heart. His thoughts no longer 


282 JOHN SILENCE 

even beat vainly for escape. The end was near, and 
he knew it. 

The dreadfully chanting voices rose about him in a 
wave : “ We worship ! We adore ! We offer ! ” The 
sounds filled his ears and hammered, almost meaning- 
less, upon his brain. 

Then the majestic grey face turned slowly down- 
wards upon him, and his very soul passed outwards 
and seemed to become absorbed in the sea of those 
anguished eyes. At the same moment a dozen hands 
forced him to his knees, and in the air before him 
he saw the arm of Kalkmann upraised, and felt the 
pressure about his throat grow strong. 

It was in this awful moment, when he had given up 
all hope, and the help of gods or men seemed beyond 
question, that a strange thing happened. For before 
his fading and terrified vision, there slid, as in a 
dream of light, — yet without apparent rhyme or 
reason — wholly unbidden and unexplained, — the face 
of that other man at the supper table of the railway 
inn. And the sight, even mentally, of that strong, 
wholesome, vigorous English face, inspired him 
suddenly with a new courage. 

It was but a flash of fading vision before he sank 
into a dark and terrible death, yet, in some inex- 
plicable way, the sight of that face stirred in him 
unconquerable hope and the certainty of deliverance. 
It was a face of power, a face, he now realised, of simple 
goodness such as might have been seen by men of 
old on the shores of Galilee ; a face, by heaven, that 
could conquer even the devils of outer space. 

And, in his despair and abandonment, he called 
upon it, and called with no uncertain accents. He 
found his voice in this overwhelming moment to some 


SECRET WORSHIP 


283 

purpose; though the words he actually used, and 
whether they were in German or English, he could 
never remember. Their effect, nevertheless, was 
instantaneous. The Brothers understood, and that 
grey Figure of evil understood. 

For a second the confusion was terrific. There 
came a great shattering sound. It seemed that the 
very earth trembled. But all Harris remembered 
afterwards was that voices rose about him in the 
clamour of terrified alarm — 

“ A man of power is among us ! A man of 
God!” 

The vast sound was repeated — the rushing through 
space as of huge projectiles — and he sank to the floor 
of the room, unconscious. The entire scene had 
vanished, vanished like smoke over the roof of a 
cottage when the wind blows. 

And, by his side, sat down a slight, un-German 
figure, — the figure of the stranger at the inn, — the 
man who had the “ rather wonderful eyes.” 

When Harris came to himself he felt cold. He 
was lying under the open sky, and the cool air of 
field and forest was blowing upon his face. He sat 
up and looked about him. The memory of the late 
scene was still horribly in his mind, but no vestige 
of it remained. No walls or ceiling enclosed him ; 
he was no longer in a room at all. There were no 
lamps turned low, no cigar smoke, no black forms 
of sinister worshippers, no tremendous grey Figure 
hovering beyond the windows. 

Open space was about him, and he was lying on 
a pile of bricks and mortar, his clothes soaked with 
dew, and the kind stars shining brightly overhead, 


284 


JOHN SILENCE 


He was lying, bruised and shaken, among the heaped- 
up debris of a ruined building. 

He stood up and stared about him. There, in the 
shadowy distance, lay the surrounding forest, and 
here, close at hand, stood the outline of the village 
buildings. But, underfoot, beyond question, lay 
nothing but the broken heaps of stones that 
betokened a building long since crumbled to dust. 
Then he saw that the stones were blackened, and 
that great wooden beams, half burnt, half rotten, 
made lines through the general debris. He stood, 
then, among the ruins of a burnt and shattered 
building, the weeds and nettles proving conclusively 
that it had lain thus for many years. 

The moon had already set behind the encircling 
forest, but the stars that spangled the heavens threw 
enough light to enable him to make quite sure of 
what he saw. Harris, the silk merchant, stood among 
these broken and burnt stones and shivered. 

Then he suddenly became aware that out of the 
gloom a figure had risen and stood beside him. 
Peering at him, he thought he recognised the face 
of the stranger at the railway inn. 

“Are you real?” he asked in a voice he hardly 
recognised as his own. 

“ More than real — I’m friendly,” replied the stranger ; 
“ I followed you up here from the inn.” 

Harris stood and stared for several minutes without 
adding anything. His teeth chattered. The least 
sound made him start ; but the simple words in his 
own language, and the tone in which they were 
uttered, comforted him inconceivably. 

“You’re English too, thank God,” he said incon- 
sequently. “These German devils ” He broke 


SECRET WORSHIP 


285 


off and put a hand to his eyes. “ But what’s become 

of them all — and the room — and — and ” The 

hand travelled down to his throat and moved 
nervously round his neck. He drew a long, long 
breath of relief. “ Did I dream everything — every- 
thing ? ” he said distractedly. 

He stared wildly about him, and the stranger 
moved forward and took his arm. “ Come,” he said 
soothingly, yet with a trace of command in the voice, 
“ we will move away from here. The high-road, or 
even the woods will be more to your taste, for we are 
standing now on one of the most haunted — and most 
terribly haunted — spots of the whole world.” 

He guided his companion’s stumbling footsteps 
over the broken masonry until they reached the path, 
the nettles stinging their hands, and Harris feeling 
his way like a man in a dream. Passing through the 
twisted iron railing they reached the path, and thence 
made their way to the road, shining white in the 
night. Once safely out of the ruins, Harris collected 
himself and turned to look back. 

“ But, how is it possible ? ” he exclaimed, his voice 
still shaking. “How can it be possible? When I 
came in here I saw the building in the moonlight. 
They opened the door. I saw the figures and heard 
the voices and touched, yes touched their very hands, 
and saw their damned black faces, saw them far more 
plainly than I see you now.” He was deeply 
bewildered. The glamour was still upon his eyes 
with a degree of reality stronger than the reality even 
of normal life. “ Was I so utterly deluded ? ” 

Then suddenly the words of the stranger, which he 
had only half heard or understood, returned to him. 

“ Haunted ? ” he asked, looking hard at him ; 


288 


JOHN SILENCE 


conscious of any interruption, and Harris became 
aware that another somewhat unusual picture had 
taken possession of his mind, as they walked there 
side by side through the cool reaches of the forest, 
and that he had found his imagination suddenly 
charged with the childhood memory of Jacob 
wrestling with an angel, — wrestling all night with a 
being of superior quality whose strength eventually 
became his own. 

“It was your abrupt conversation with the priest 
at supper that first put me upon the track of this 
remarkable occurrence,” he heard the man’s quiet 
voice beside him in the darkness, “ and it was from 
him I learned after you left the story of the devil- 
worship that became secretly established in the 
heart of this simple and devout little community.” 

“Devil-worship! Here !” Harris stammered, 

aghast. 

“Yes — here; — conducted secretly for years by 
a group of Brothers before unexplained disap- 
pearances in the neighbourhood led to its discovery. 
For where could they have found a safer place in 
the whole wide world for their ghastly traffic and 
perverted powers than here, in the very precincts 
— under cover of the very shadow of saintliness and 
holy living ? ” 

“ Awful, awful ! ” whispered the silk merchant, 
“ and when I tell you the words they used to me ” 

“ I know it all,” the stranger said quietly. “ I 
saw and heard everything. My plan first was to 
wait till the end and then to take steps for their 
destruction, but in the interest of your personal 
safety,” — he spoke with the utmost gravity and 
conviction, — “ in the interest of the safety of your 


SECRET WORSHIP 289 

soul, 1 made my presence known when I did, and 
before the conclusion had been reached ” 

“My safety! The danger, then, was real. They 

were alive and ” Words failed him. He stopped 

in the road and turned towards his companion, the 
shining of whose eyes he could just make out in the 
gloom. 

“ It was a concourse of the shells of violent men, 
spiritually-developed but evil men, seeking after 
death — the death of the body — to prolong their vile 
and unnatural existence. And had they accomplished 
their object you, in turn, at the death of your body, 
would have passed into their power and helped to 
swell their dreadful purposes.” 

Harris made no reply. He was trying hard to 
concentrate his mind upon the sweet and common 
things of life. He even thought of silk and St. 
Paul’s Churchyard and the faces of his partners in 
business. 

“ For you came all prepared to be caught,” he 
heard the other’s voice like some one talking to him 
from a distance; “your deeply introspective mood 
had already reconstructed the past so vividly, so 
intensely, that you were en rapport at once with 
any forces of those days that chanced still to be 
lingering. And they swept you up all unresistingly.” 

Harris tightened his hold upon the stranger’s arm 
as he heard. At the moment he had room for one 
emotion only. It did not seem to him odd that 
this stranger should have such intimate knowledge 
of his mind. 

“It is, alas, chiefly the evil emotions that are able 
to leave their photographs upon surrounding scenes 
and objects,” the other added, “ and who ever heard 


290 


JOHN SILENCE 


of a place haunted by a noble deed, or of beautiful 
and lovely ghcfsts revisiting the glimpses of the 
moon ? It is unfortunate. But the wicked passions 
of men’s hearts alone seem strong enough to leave 
pictures that persist ; the good are ever too luke- 
warm.” 

The stranger sighed as he spoke. But Harris, 
exhausted and shaken as he was to the very core, 
paced by his side, only half listening. He moved as 
in a dream still. It was very wonderful to him, this 
walk home under the stars in the early hours of 
the October morning, the peaceful forest all about 
them, mist rising here and there over the small 
clearings, and the sound of water from a hundred 
little invisible streams filling in the pauses of the 
talk. In after life he always looked back to it as 
something magical and impossible, something that 
had seemed too beautiful, too curiously beautiful, to 
have been quite true. And, though at the time he 
heard and understood but a quarter of what the 
stranger said, it came back to him afterwards, stay- 
ing with him till the end of his days, and always with 
a curious, haunting sense of unreality, as though he 
had enjoyed a wonderful dream of which he could 
recall only faint and exquisite portions. 

But the horror of the earlier experience was 
effectually dispelled ; and when they reached the 
railway inn. somewhere about three o’clock in the 
morning, Harris shook the stranger’s hand gratefully, 
effusively, meeting the look of those rather wonderful 
eyes with a full heart, and went up to his room, 
thinking in a hazy, dream-like way of the words with 
which the stranger had brought their conversation 
to an end as they left the confines of the forest — 


SECRET WORSHIP 


291 


“ And if thought and emotion can persist in this 
way so long after the brain that sent them forth 
has crumbled into dust, how vitally important it 
must be to control their very birth in the heart, 
and guard them with the keenest possible restraint.” 

But Harris, the silk merchant, slept better than 
might have been expected, and with a soundness 
that carried him half-way through the day. And 
when he came downstairs and learned that the 
stranger had already taken his departure, he realised 
with keen regret that he had never once thought of 
asking his name. 

“Yes, he signed in the visitors’ book,” said the 
girl in reply to his question. 

And he turned over the blotted pages and found 
there, the last entry, in a very delicate and individual 
handwriting — 

“ John Silence , London.” 



CASE V 


THE CAMP OF THE DOG 





CASE V 


THE CAMP OF THE DOG 

I 

ISLANDS of all shapes and sizes troop northward 
from Stockholm by the hundred, and the little 
steamer that threads their intricate mazes in summer 
leaves the traveller in a somewhat bewildered state 
as regards the points of the compass when it 
reaches the end of its journey at Waxholm. But 
it is only after Waxholm that the true islands begin, 
so to speak, to run wild, and start up the coast on 
their tangled course of a hundred miles of deserted 
loveliness, and it was in the very heart of this 
delightful confusion that we pitched our tents for 
a summer holiday. A veritable wilderness of islands 
lay about us : from the mere round button of a rock 
that bore a single fir, to the mountainous stretch 
of a square mile, densely wooded, and bounded by 
precipitous cliffs; so close together often that a 
strip of water ran between no wider than a country 
lane, or, again, so far that an expanse stretched like 
the open sea for miles. 

Although the larger islands boasted farms and 
fishing stations, the majority were uninhabited. 
Carpeted with moss and heather, their coast-lines 

29s 


296 


JOHN SILENCE 


showed a series of ravines and clefts and little 
sandy bays, with a growth of splendid pine-woods 
that came down to the water’s edge and led the eye 
through unknown depths of shadow and mystery 
into the very heart of primitive forest. 

The particular islands to which we had camping 
rights by virtue of paying a nominal sum to a 
Stockholm merchant lay together in a picturesque 
group far beyond the reach of the steamer, one being 
a mere reef with a fringe of fairy-like birches, and 
two others, cliff-bound monsters rising with wooded 
heads out of the sea. The fourth, which we selected 
because it enclosed a little lagoon suitable for 
anchorage, bathing, night-lines, and what-not, shall 
have what description is necessary as the story 
proceeds ; but, so far as paying rent was concerned, 
we might equally well have pitched our tents on any 
one of a hundred others that clustered about us as 
thickly as a swarm of bees. 

It was in the blaze of an evening in July, the air 
clear as crystal, the sea a cobalt blue, when we left 
the steamer on the borders of civilisation and sailed 
away with maps, compasses, and provisions for the 
little group of dots in the Skargard that were to 
be our home for the next two months. The dinghy 
and my Canadian canoe trailed behind us, with 
tents and dunnage carefully piled aboard, and when 
the point of cliff intervened to hide the steamer 
and the Waxholm hotel we realised for the first 
time that the horror of trains and houses was far 
behind us, the fever of men and cities, the weariness 
of streets and confined spaces. The wilderness 
opened up on all sides into endless blue reaches, 
and the map and compasses were so frequently 


THE CAMP OF THE DOG 


297 


called into requisition that we went astray more 
often than not and progress was enchantingly slow. 
It took us, for instance, two whole days to find our 
crescent-shaped home, and the camps we made on 
the way were so fascinating that we left them with 
difficulty and regret, for each island seemed more 
desirable than the one before it, and over all lay the 
spell of haunting peace, remoteness from the tur- 
moil of the world, and the freedom of open and 
desolate spaces. 

And so many of these spots of world - beauty 
have I sought out and dwelt in, that in my mind 
remains only a composite memory of their faces, a 
true map of heaven, as it were, from which this 
particular one stands forth with unusual sharpness 
because of the strange things that happened there, 
and also, I think, because anything in which John 
Silence played a part has a habit of fixing itself in 
the mind with a living and lasting quality of vividness. 

For the moment, however, Dr. Silence was not of 
the party. Some private case in the interior of 
Hungary claimed his attention, and it was not till 
later — the 15th of August, to be exact — that I had 
arranged to meet him in Berlin and then return to 
London together for our harvest of winter work. All 
the members of our party, however, were known to 
him more or less well, and on this third day as we 
sailed through the narrow opening into the lagoon 
and saw the circular ridge of trees in a gold and 
crimson sunset before us, his last words to me when 
we parted in London for some unaccountable reason 
came back very sharply to my memory, and recalled 
the curious impression of prophecy with which I had 
first heard them : 


298 


JOHN SILENCE 


“ Enjoy your holiday and store up all the force you 
can,” he had said as the train slipped out of Victoria ; 
“ and we will meet in Berlin on the 15th — unless you 
should send for me sooner.” 

And now suddenly the words returned to me so 
clearly that it seemed I almost heard his voice in my 
ear: “ Unless you should send for me sooner;” and 
returned, moreover, with a significance I was wholly 
at a loss to understand that touched somewhere in 
the depths of my mind a vague sense of apprehension 
that they had all along been intended in the nature 
of a prophecy. 

In the lagoon, then, the wind failed us this July 
evening, as was only natural behind the shelter of 
the belt of woods, and we took to the oars, all 
breathless with the beauty of this first sight of our 
island home, yet all talking in somewhat hushed 
voices of the best place to land, the depth of water, 
the safest place to anchor, to put up the tents in, the 
most sheltered spot for the camp-fires, and a dozen 
things of importance that crop up when a home in 
the wilderness has actually to be made. 

And during this busy sunset hour of unloading 
before the dark, the souls of my companions adopted 
the trick of presenting themselves very vividly 
anew before my mind, and introducing themselves 
afresh. 

In reality, I suppose, our party was in no sense 
singular. In the conventional life at home they 
certainly seemed ordinary enough, but suddenly, as 
we passed through these gates of the wilderness, I 
saw them more sharply than before, with characters 
stripped of the atmosphere of men and cities. A 
complete change of setting often furnishes a startlingly 


THE CAMP OF THE DOG 


299 


new view of people hitherto held for well-known; 
they present another facet of their personalities. I 
seemed to see my own party almost as new people 
— people I had not known properly hitherto, people 
who would drop all disguises and henceforth reveal 
themselves as they really were. And each one 
seemed to say : “ Now you will see me as I am. 
You will see me here in this primitive life of the 
wilderness without clothes. All my masks and veils 
I have left behind in the abodes of men. So, look 
out for surprises ! ” 

The Reverend Timothy Maloney helped me to put 
up the tents, long practice making the process easy, 
and while he drove in pegs and tightened ropes, 
his coat off, his flannel collar flying open without a 
tie, it was impossible to avoid the conclusion that he 
was cut out for the life of a pioneer rather than the 
church. He was fifty years of age, muscular, blue- 
eyed and hearty, and he took his share of the work, 
and more, without shirking. The way he handled 
the axe in cutting down saplings for the tent-poles 
was a delight to see, and his eye in judging the level 
was unfailing. 

Bullied as a young man into a lucrative family 
living, he had in turn bullied his mind into some 
semblance of orthodox beliefs, doing the honours of 
the little country church with an energy that made 
one think of a coal-heaver tending china ; and it was 
only in the past few years that he had resigned the 
living and taken instead to cramming young men for 
their examinations. This suited him better. It 
enabled him, too, to indulge his passion for spells of 
“ wild life,” and to spend the summer months of most 
years under canvas in one part of the world or 


300 


JOHN SILENCE 


another where he could take his young men with him 
and combine “ reading ” with open air. 

His wife usually accompanied him, and there was 
no doubt she enjoyed the trips, for she possessed, 
though in less degree, the same joy of the wilderness 
that was his own distinguishing characteristic. The 
only difference was that while he regarded it as the 
real life, she regarded it as an interlude. While he 
camped out with his heart and mind, she played at 
camping out with her clothes and body. None the 
less, she made a splendid companion, and to watch 
her busy cooking dinner over the fire we had built 
among the stones was to understand that her heart 
was in the business for the moment and that she was 
happy even with the detail. 

Mrs. Maloney at home, knitting in the sun and 
believing that the world was made in six days, was 
one woman ; but Mrs. Maloney, standing with bare 
arms over the smoke of a wood fire under the pine 
trees, was another ; and Peter Sangree, the Canadian 
pupil, with his pale skin, and his loose, though not 
ungainly figure, stood beside her in very unfavourable 
contrast as he scraped potatoes and sliced bacon with 
slender white fingers that seemed better suited to 
hold a pen than a knife. She ordered him about like 
a slave, and he obeyed, too, with willing pleasure, 
for in spite of his general appearance of debility he 
was as happy to be in camp as any of them. 

But more than any other member of the party, 
Joan Maloney, the daughter, was the one who seemed 
a natural and genuine part of the landscape, who 
belonged to it all just in the same way that the trees 
and the moss and the grey rocks running out into 
the water belonged to it. For she was obviously in 


THE CAMP OF THE DOG 


301 

her right and natural setting, a creature of the wilds, 
a gipsy in her own home. 

To any one with a discerning eye this would have 
been more or less apparent, but to me, who had 
known her during all the twenty-two years of her 
life and was familiar with the ins and outs of her 
primitive, utterly un-modern type, it was strikingly 
clear. To see her there made it impossible to 
imagine her again in civilisation. I lost all recollec- 
tion of how she looked in a town. The memory 
somehow evaporated. This slim creature before me, 
flitting to and fro with the grace of the woodland life, 
swift, supple adroit, on her knees blowing the fire, or 
stirring the frying-pan through a veil ofsmoke, suddenly 
seemed the only way I had ever really seen her. 
Here she was at home ; in London she became some 
one concealed by clothes, an artificial doll overdressed 
and moving by clockwork, only a portion of her 
alive. Here she was alive all over. 

I forget altogether how she was dressed, just as I 
forget how any particular tree was dressed, or how 
the markings ran on any one of the boulders that 
lay about the Camp. She looked just as wild and 
natural and untamed as everything else that went to 
make up the scene, and more than that I cannot say. 

Pretty, she was decidedly not. She was thin, 
skinny, dark -haired, and possessed of great physical 
strength in the form of endurance. She had, too, 
something of the force and vigorous purpose of a 
man, tempestuous sometimes and wild to passionate, 
frightening her mother, and puzzling her easy-going 
father with her storms of waywardness, while at the 
same time she stirred his admiration by her violence. 
A pagan of the pagans she was besides, and with 


302 


JOHN SILENCE 


some haunting suggestion of old-world pagan beauty 
about her dark face and eyes. Altogether an odd 
and difficult character, but with a generosity and 
high courage that made her very lovable. 

In town life she always seemed to me to feel 
cramped, bored, a devil in a cage, in her eyes a 
hunted expression as though any moment she 
dreaded to be caught. But up in these spacious 
solitudes all this disappeared. Away from the 
limitations that plagued and stung her, she would 
show at her best, and as I watched her moving about 
the Camp I repeatedly found myself thinking of a 
wild creature that had just obtained its freedom and 
was trying its muscles. 

Peter Sangree, of course, at once went down before 
her. But she was so obviously beyond his reach, and 
besides so well able to take care of herself, that I 
think her parents gave the matter but little thought, 
and he himself worshipped at a respectful distance, 
keeping admirable control of his passion in all 
respects save one ; for at his age the eyes are difficult 
to master, and the yearning, almost the devouring, 
expression often visible in them was probably there 
unknown even to himself. He, better than any one 
else, understood that he had fallen in love with 
something most hard of attainment, something that 
drew him to the very edge of life, and almost beyond 
it. It, no doubt, was a secret and terrible joy to him, 
this passionate worship from afar; only I think he 
suffered more than any one guessed, and that his 
want of vitality was due in large measure to the 
constant stream of unsatisfied yearning that poured 
for ever from his soul and body. Moreover, it seemed 
to me, who now saw them for the first time together, 


THE CAMP OF THE DOG 


303 


that there was an unnamable something — an elusive 
quality of some kind — that marked them as belonging 
to the same world, and that although the girl ignored 
him she was secretly, and perhaps unknown to 
herself, drawn by some attribute very deep in her 
own nature to some quality equally deep in his. 

This, then, was the party when we first settled down 
into our two months’ camp on the island in the 
Baltic Sea. Other figures flitted from time to time 
across the scene, and sometimes one reading man, 
sometimes another, came to join us and spend his 
four hours a day in the clergyman’s tent, but they 
came for short periods only, and they went without 
leaving much trace in my memory, and certainly 
they played no important part in what subsequently 
happened. 

The weather favoured us that night, so that by 
sunset the tents were up, the boats unloaded, a store 
of wood collected and chopped into lengths, and the 
candle-lanterns hung round ready for lighting on the 
trees. Sangree, too, had picked deep mattresses of 
balsam boughs for the women’s beds, and had cleared 
little paths of brushwood from their tents to the 
central fireplace. All was prepared for bad weather. 
It was a cosy supper and a well-cooked one that we 
sat down to and ate under the stars, and, according 
to the clergyman, the only meal fit to eat we had 
seen since we left London a week before. 

The deep stillness, after that roar of steamers, 
trains, and tourists, held something that thrilled, for 
as we lay round the fire there was no sound but the 
faint sighing of the pines and the soft lapping of the 
waves along the shore and against the sides of the boat 
in the lagoon. The ghostly outline of her white sails 


304 


JOHN SILENCE 


was just visible through the trees, idly rocking to and 
fro in her calm anchorage, her sheets flapping gently 
against the mast. Beyond lay the dim blue shapes 
of other islands floating in the night, and from all the 
great spaces about us came the murmur of the sea 
and the soft breathing of great woods. The odours of 
the wilderness — smells of wind and earth, of trees 
and water, clean, vigorous, and mighty — were the 
true odours of a virgin world unspoilt by men, more 
penetrating and more subtly intoxicating than any 
other perfume in the whole world. Oh! — and 
dangerously strong, too, no doubt, for some natures ! 

“ Ahhh ! ” breathed out the clergyman after supper, 
with an indescribable gesture of satisfaction and relief. 
“ Here there is freedom, and room for body and mind 
to turn in. Here one can work and rest and play. 
Here one can be alive and absorb something of the 
earth-forces that never get within touching-distance 
in the cities. By George, I shall make a perman- 
ent camp here and come when it is time to die ! ” 

The good man was merely giving vent to his delight 
at being under canvas. He said the same thing 
every year, and he said it often. But it more or less 
expressed the superficial feelings of us all. And 
when, a little later, he turned to compliment his wife 
on the fried potatoes, and discovered that she was 
snoring, with her back against a tree, he grunted 
with content at the sight and put a ground-sheet 
over her feet, as if it were the most natural thing in 
the world for her to fall asleep after dinner, and then 
moved back to his own corner, smoking his pipe 
with great satisfaction. 

And I, smoking mine too, lay and fought against 
the most delicious sleep imaginable, while my eyes 


THE CAMP OF THE DOG 


305 


wandered from the fire to the stars peeping through 
the branches, and then back again to the group 
about me. The Rev. Timothy soon let his pipe 
go out, and succumbed as his wife had done, for 
he had worked hard and eaten well. Sangree, also 
smoking, leaned against a tree with his gaze fixed 
on the girl, a depth of yearning in his face that he 
could not hide, and that really distressed me for 
him. And Joan herself, with wide staring eyes, 
alert, full of the new forces of the place, evidently 
keyed up by the magic of finding herself among all 
the things her soul recognised as “home,” sat rigid 
by the fire, her thoughts roaming through the 
spaces, the blood stirring about her heart. She 
was as unconscious of the Canadian’s gaze as she 
was that her parents both slept. She looked to 
me more like a tree, or something that had grown 
out of the island, than a living girl of the century ; 
and when I spoke across to her in a whisper and 
suggested a tour of investigation, she started and 
looked up at me as though she heard a voice in 
her dreams. 

Sangree leaped up and joined us, and without 
waking the others we three went over the ridge of 
the island and made our way down to the shore 
behind. The water lay like a lake before us still 
coloured by the sunset. The air was keen and 
scented, wafting the smell of the wooded islands 
that hung about us in the darkening air. Very 
small waves tumbled softly on the sand. The sea 
was sown with stars, and everywhere breathed and 
pulsed the beauty of the northern summer night. I 
confess I speedily lost consciousness of the human 
presences beside me, and I have little doubt Joan 
20 


30 6 


JOHN SILENCE 


did too. Only Sangree felt otherwise, I suppose 
for presently we heard him sighing ; and I can well 
imagine that he absorbed the whole wonder and 
passion of the scene into his aching heart, to swell 
the pain there that was more searching even than 
the pain at the sight of such matchless and incom- 
prehensible beauty. 

The splash of a fish jumping broke the spell. 

“I wish we had the canoe now,” remarked Joan; 
“we could paddle out to the other islands.” 

“ Of course,” I said ; “ wait here and I’ll go across 
for it,” and was turning to feel my way back through 
the darkness when she stopped me in a voice that 
meant what it said. 

“No; Mr. Sangree will get it. We will wait here 
and cooee to guide him 

The Canadian was off in a moment, for she had 
only to hint of her wishes and he obeyed. 

“Keep out from shore in case of rocks,” I cried 
out as he went, “and turn to the right out of the 
lagoon. That’s the shortest way round by the map.” 

My voice travelled across the still waters and 
woke echoes in the distant islands that came back 
to us like people calling out of space. It was only 
thirty or forty yards over the ridge and down the 
other side to the lagoon where the boats lay, but 
it was a good mile to coast round the shore in the 
dark to where we stood and waited. We heard 
him stumbling away among the boulders, and then 
the sounds suddenly ceased as he topped the ridge 
and went down past the fire on the other side. 

“I didn’t want to be left alone with him,” the 
girl said presently in a low voice. “ I’m always 
afraid he’s going to say or do something ” She 


THE CAMP OF THE DOG 


307 


hesitated a moment, looking quickly over her shoulder 
towards the ridge where he had just disappeared 
— “ something that might lead to unpleasantness.” 

She stopped abruptly. 

“ You frightened, Joan ! ” I exclaimed, with genuine 
surprise. “This is a new light on your wicked 
character. I thought the human being who could 
frighten you did not exist.” Then I suddenly 
realised she was talking seriously — looking to me 
for help of some kind — and at once I dropped the 
teasing attitude. 

“ He’s very far gone, I think, Joan,” 1 added 
gravely. “You must be kind to him, whatever else 
you may feel. He’s exceedingly fond of you.” 

“ I know, but I can’t help it,” she whispered, lest 
her voice should carry in the stillness ; “ there’s some- 
thing about him that — that makes me feel creepy 
and half afraid.” 

“ But, poor man, it’s not his fault if he is delicate 
and sometimes looks like death,” I laughed gently, 
by way of defending what I felt to be a very inno- 
cent member of my sex. 

“Oh, but it’s not that I mean,” she answered 
quickly; “it’s something I feel about him, something 
in his soul, something he hardly knows himself, but 
that may come out if we are much together. It 
draws me, I feel, tremendously. It stirs what is wild 
in me— deep down — oh, very deep down, — yet at 
the same time makes me feel afraid.” 

“ I suppose his thoughts are always playing about 
you,” I said, “ but he’s nice-minded and ■” 

“ Yes, yes,” she interrupted impatiently, “ I can 
trust myself absolutely with him. He’s gentle and 
singularly pure-minded. But there’s something else 


JOHN SILENCE 


308 

that ” She stopped again sharply to listen. 

Then she came up close beside me in the darkness, 
whispering — 

“ You know, Mr. Hubbard, sometimes my intuitions 
warn me a little too strongly to be ignored. Oh 
yes, you needn’t tell me again that it’s difficult to 
distinguish between fancy and intuition. I know all 
that. But I also know that there’s something deep 
down in that man’s soul that calls to something deep 
down in mine. And at present it frightens me. 
Because I cannot make out what it is ; and I know, 
I know , he’ll do something some day that — that will 
shake my life to the very bottom.” She laughed a 
little at the strangeness of her own description. 

I turned to look at her more closely, but the dark- 
ness was too great to show her face. There was an 
intensity, almost of suppressed passion, in her voice 
that took me completely by surprise. 

“Nonsense, Joan,” I said, a little severely; “you 
know him well. He’s been with your father for 
months now.” 

“ But that was in London ; and up here it’s different 
— I mean, I feel that it may be different. Life in a 
place like this blows away the restraints of the arti- 
ficial life at home. I know, oh, I know what I’m 
saying. I feel all untied in a place like this; the 
rigidity of one’s nature begins to melt and flow. 
Surely you must understand what I mean ! ” 

“ Of course I understand,” I replied, yet not 
wishing to encourage her in her present line of 
thought, “and it’s a grand experience — for a short 
time. But you’re overtired to-night, Joan, like the 
rest of us. A few days in this air will set you above 
all fears of the kind you mention.” 


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309 


Then, after a moment's silence, I added, feeling 
I should estrange her confidence altogether if I 
blundered any more and treated her like a child — 
“ I think, perhaps, the true explanation is that you 
pity him for loving you, and at the same time you 
feel the repulsion of the healthy, vigorous animal for 
what is weak and timid. If he came up boldly and 
took you by the throat and shouted that he would 
force you to love him — well, then you would feel no 
fear at all. You would know exactly how to deal 
with him. Isn’t it, perhaps, something of that kind ? ” 
The girl made no reply, and when I took her 
hand I felt that it trembled a little and was cold. 

“ It’s not his love that I’m afraid of,” she said 
hurriedly, for at this moment we heard the dip of 
a paddle in the water, “ it’s something in his very 
soul that terrifies me in a way I "have never been 
terrified before, — yet fascinates me. In town I was 
hardly conscious of his presence. But the moment 
we got away from civilisation, it began to come. He 
seems so — so real up here. I dread being alone with 
him. It makes me feel that something must burst 
and tear its way out — that he would do something — 
or I should do something — I don’t know exactly 
what I mean, probably, — but that I should let myself 

go and scream •” 

“Joan ! ” 

“ Don’t be alarmed,” she laughed shortly ; “ I 
shan’t do anything silly, but I wanted to tell you my 
feelings in case I needed your help. When I have 
intuitions as strong as this they are never wrong, 
only I don’t know yet what it means exactly.” 

“ You must hold out for the month, at any rate,” 
I said in as matter-of-fact a voice as I could manage, 


3io 


JOHN SILENCE 


for her manner had somehow changed my surprise 
to a subtle sense of alarm. “ Sangree only stays the 
month, you know. And, anyhow, you are such an 
odd creature yourself that you should feel generously 
towards other odd creatures,” I ended lamely, with 
a forced laugh. 

She gave my hand a sudden pressure. “ I’m glad 
I’ve told you at any rate,” she said quickly under her 
breath, for the canoe was now gliding up silently like 
a ghost to our feet, “ and I’m glad you’re here too,” 
she added as we moved down towards the water to 
meet it. 

I made Sangree change into the bows and got into 
the steering seat myself, putting the girl between us 
so that I could watch them both by keeping their 
outlines against the sea and stars. For the intuitions 
of certain folk — women and children usually, I con- 
fess — I have always felt a great respect that has 
more often than not been justified by experience; 
and now the curious emotion stirred in me by the 
girl’s words remained somewhat vividly in my con- 
sciousness. I explained it in some measure by the 
fact that the girl, tired out by the fatigue of many 
days’ travel, had suffered a vigorous reaction of some 
kind from the strong, desolate scenery, and further, 
perhaps, that she had been treated to my own 
experience of seeing the members of the party in a 
new light — the Canadian, being partly a stranger, 
more vividly than the rest of us. But, at the same 
time, I felt it was quite possible that she had sensed 
some subtle link between his personality and her own, 
some quality that she had hitherto ignored and that 
the routine of town life had kept buried out of sight. 
The only thing that seemed difficult to explain was 


THE CAMP OF THE DOG 


3 1 1 

the fear she had spoken of, and this I hoped the 
wholesome effects of camp-life and exercise would 
sweep away naturally in the course of time. 

We made the tour of the island without speaking. 
It was all too beautiful for speech. The trees crowded 
down to the shore to hear us pass. We saw their 
fine dark heads, bowed low with splendid dignity to 
watch us, forgetting for a moment that the stars 
were caught in the needled network of their hair. 
Against the sky in the west, where still lingered the 
sunset gold, we saw the wild toss of the horizon, 
shaggy with forest and cliff, gripping the heart like 
the motive in a symphony, and sending the sense of 
beauty all a-shiver through the mind — all these 
surrounding islands standing above the water like 
low clouds, and like them seeming to post along 
silently into the engulfing night. We heard the 
musical drip-drip of the paddle, and the little wash 
of our waves on the shore, and then suddenly we 
found ourselves at the opening of the lagoon again, 
having made the complete circuit of our home. 

The Reverend Timothy had awakened from sleep 
and was singing to himself; and the sound of his 
voice as we glided down the fifty yards of enclosed 
water was pleasant to hear and undeniably whole- 
some. We saw the glow of the fire up among the 
trees on the ridge, and his shadow moving about as 
he threw on more wood. 

“ There you are ! ” he called aloud. “ Good again ! 
Been setting the night-lines, eh ? Capital ! And 
your mother’s still fast asleep, Joan.” 

His cheery laugh floated across the water; he had 
not been in the least disturbed by our absence, for 
old campers are not easily alarmed. 


312 


JOHN SILENCE 


“ Now, remember,” he went on, after we had told 
our little tale of travel by the fire, and Mrs. Maloney 
had asked for the fourth time exactly where her 
tent was and whether the door faced east or south, 
“every one takes their turn at cooking breakfast, 
and one of the men is always out at sunrise to catch 
it first. Hubbard, I’ll toss you which you do in the 
morning and which 1 do ! ” He lost the toss. “ Then 
I’ll catch it,” I said, laughing at his discomfiture, 
for I knew he loathed stirring porridge. “ And 
mind you don’t burn it as you did every blessed 
time last year on the Volga,” I added by way of 
reminder. 

Mrs. Maloney’s fifth interruption about the door 
of her tent, and her further pointed observation that 
it was past nine o’clock, set us lighting lanterns and 
putting the fire out for safety. 

But before we separated for the night the clergy- 
man had a time-honoured little ritual of his own to 
go through that no one had the heart to deny him. 
He always did this. It was a relic of his pulpit 
habits. He glanced briefly from one to the other 
of us, his face grave and earnest, his hands lifted to 
the stars and his eyes all closed and puckered up 
beneath a momentary frown. Then he offered up 
a short, almost inaudible prayer, thanking Heaven 
for our safe arrival, begging for good weather, no 
illness or accidents, plenty of fish, and strong sail- 
ing winds. 

And then, unexpectedly — no one knew why 
exactly — he ended up with an abrupt request that 
nothing from the kingdom of darkness should be 
allowed to afflict our peace, and no evil thing come 
near to disturb us in the night-time. 


THE CAMP OF THE DOG 


313 


And while he uttered these last surprising words, 
so strangely unlike his usual ending, it chanced that 
I looked up and let my eyes wander round the 
group assembled about the dying fire. And it 
certainly seemed to me that Sangree’s face under- 
went a sudden and visible alteration. He was 
staring at Joan, and as he stared the change ran 
over it like a shadow and was gone. I started in 
spite of myself, for something oddly concentrated, 
potent, collected, had come into the expression 
usually so scattered and feeble. But it was all 
swift as a passing meteor, and when I looked a 
second time his face was normal and he was look- 
ing among the trees. 

And Joan, luckily, had not observed him, her head 
being bowed and her eyes tightly closed while her 
father prayed. 

“The girl has a vivid imagination indeed,” I 
thought, half laughing, as I lit the lanterns, “ if her 
thoughts can put a glamour upon mine in this way ; ” 
and yet somehow, when we said good-night, I took 
occasion to give her a few vigorous words of en- 
couragement, and went to her tent to make sure I 
could find it quickly in the night in case anything 
happened. In her quick way the girl understood 
and thanked me, and the last thing I heard as I 
moved off to the men’s quarters was Mrs. Maloney 
crying that there were beetles in her tent, and 
Joan’s laughter as she went to help her turn them out. 

Half an hour later the island was silent as the 
grave, but for the mournful voices of the wind as it 
sighed up from the sea. Like white sentries stood 
the three tents of the men on one side of the ridge, 
and on the other side, half hidden by some birches, 


314 


JOHN SILENCE 


whose leaves just shivered as the breeze caught them, 
the women’s tents, patches of ghostly grey, gathered 
more closely together for mutual shelter and pro- 
tection. Something like fifty yards of broken ground, 
grey rock, moss and lichen, lay between, and over 
all lay the curtain of the night and the great whisper- 
ing winds from the forests of Scandinavia. 

And the very last thing, just before floating away 
on that mighty wave that carries one so softly off 
into the deeps of forgetfulness, I again heard the 
voice of John Silence as the train moved out of 
Victoria Station ; and by some subtle connection 
that met me on the very threshold of conscious- 
ness there rose in my mind simultaneously the 
memory of the girl’s half-given confidence, and of 
her distress. As by some wizardry of approaching 
dreams they seemed in that instant to be related ; 
but before I could analyse the why and the where- 
fore, both sank away out of sight again, and I was 
off beyond recall. 

“ Unless you should send for me sooner.” 

II 

Whether Mrs. Maloney’s tent door opened south 
or east I think she never discovered, for it is quite 
certain she always slept with the flap tightly fastened ; 
I only know that my own little “ five by seven, all 
silk ” faced due east, because next morning the sun, 
pouring in as only the wilderness sun knows how to 
pour, woke me early, and a moment later, with a short 
run over soft moss and a flying dive from the granite 
ledge, I was swimming in the most sparkling water 
imaginable. 


THE CAMP OF THE DOG 


315 


It was barely four o’clock, and the sun came down 
a long vista of blue islands that led out to the open 
sea and Finland. Nearer by rose the wooded domes 
of our own property, still capped and wreathed with 
smoky trails of fast-melting mist, and looking as fresh 
as though it was the morning of Mrs. Maloney’s 
Sixth Day and they had just issued, clean and 
brilliant, from the hands of the great Architect. 

In the open spaces the ground was drenched with 
dew, and from the sea a cool salt wind stole in among 
the trees and set the branches trembling in an atmos- 
phere of shimmering silver. The tents shone white 
where the sun caught them in patches. Below lay 
the lagoon, still dreaming of the summer night ; in 
the open the fish were jumping busily, sending 
musical ripples towards the shore; and in the air 
hung the magic of dawn — silent, incommunicable. 

I lit the fire, so that an hour later the clergyman 
should find good ashes to stir his porridge over, and 
then set forth upon an examination of the island, but 
hardly had I gone a dozen yards when I saw a figure 
standing a little in front of me where the sunlight 
fell in a pool among the trees. 

It was Joan. She had already been up an hour, 
she told me, and had bathed before the last stars had 
left the sky. I saw at once that the new spirit of this 
solitary region had entered into her, banishing the 
fears of the night, for her face was like the face of a 
happy denizen of the wilderness, and her eyes stainless 
and shining. Her feet were bare, and drops of dew 
she had shaken from the branches hung in her loose- 
flying hair. Obviously she had come into her own. 

“ I’ve been all over the island,” she announced 
laughingly, “ and there are two things wanting.” 


316 


JOHN SILENCE 


“ You’re a good judge, Joan. What are they ? ” 

“ There’s no animal life, and there’s no — water.” 

“ They go together,” I said. “ Animals don’t 
bother with a rock like this unless there’s a spring 
on it.” 

And as she led me from place to place, happy and 
excited, leaping adroitly from rock to rock, I was 
glad to note that my first impressions were correct. 
She made no reference to our conversation of the 
night before. The new spirit had driven out the old. 
There was no room in her heart for fear or anxiety, 
and Nature had everything her own way. 

The island, we found, was some three-quarters of a 
mile from point to point, built in a circle, or wide 
horseshoe, with an opening of twenty feet at the mouth 
of the lagoon. Pine-trees grew thickly all over, but 
here and there were patches of silver birch, scrub 
oak, and considerable colonies of wild raspberry and 
gooseberry bushes. The two ends of the horseshoe 
formed bare slabs of smooth granite running into the 
sea and forming dangerous reefs just below the surface, 
but the rest of the island rose in a forty-foot ridge 
and sloped down steeply to the sea on either 
side, being nowhere more than a hundred yards 
wide. 

The outer shore-line was much indented with 
numberless coves and bays and sandy beaches, with 
here and there caves and precipitous little cliffs 
against which the sea broke in spray and thunder. 
But the inner shore, the shore of the lagoon, was low 
and regular, and so well protected by the wall of trees 
along the ridge that no storm could ever send more 
than a passing ripple along its sandy marges. Eternal 
shelter reigned there. 


THE CAMP OF THE DOG 


317 


On one of the other islands, a few hundred yards 
away — for the rest of the party slept late this first 
morning, and we took to the canoe — we discovered 
a spring of fresh water untainted by the brackish 
flavour of the Baltic, and having thus solved the most 
important problem of the Camp, we next proceeded to 
deal with the second — fish. And in half an hour we 
reeled in and turned homewards, for we had no means 
of storage, and to clean more fish than may be stored 
or eaten in a day is no wise occupation for experienced 
campers. 

And as we landed towards six o’clock we heard the 
clergyman singing as usual and saw his wife and 
Sangree shaking out their blankets in the sun, and 
dressed in a fashion that finally dispelled all memories 
of streets and civilisation. 

“The Little People lit the fire for me,” cried Maloney, 
looking natural and at home in his ancient flannel 
suit and breaking off in the middle of his singing, “ so 
I’ve got the porridge going — and this time it’s not 
burnt” 

We reported the discovery of water and held up 
the fish. 

“ Good ! Good again ! ” he cried. “ We’ll have the 
first decent breakfast we’ve had this year. Sangree ’ll 
clean ’em in no time, and the Bo’sun’s Mate ” 

“Will fry them to a turn,” laughed the voice of 
Mrs. Maloney, appearing on the scene in a tight blue 
jersey and sandals, and catching up the frying-pan. 
Her husband always called her the Bo’sun’s Mate in 
Camp, because it was her duty, among others, to pipe 
all hands to meals. 

“ And as for you, Joan,” went on the happy man, 
“ you look like the spirit of the island, with moss in your 


3i8 


JOHN SILENCE 


hair and wind in your eyes, and sun and stars mixed 
in your face” He looked at her with delighted 
admiration. “ Here, Sangree, take these twelve, 
there’s a good fellow, they’re the biggest ; and we’ll 
have ’em in butter in less time than you can say 
Baltic island ! ” 

I watched the Canadian as he slowly moved off to 
the cleaning pail. His eyes were drinking in the 
girl’s beauty, and a wave of passionate, almost 
feverish, joy passed over his face, expressive of the 
ecstasy of true worship more than anything else. 
Perhaps he was thinking that he still had three weeks 
to come with that vision always before his eyes ; 
perhaps he was thinking of his dreams in the night. 
I cannot say. But I noticed the curious mingling of 
yearning and happiness in his eyes, and the strength 
of the impression touched my curiosity. Something 
in his face held my gaze for a second, something to 
do with its intensity. That so timid, so gentle a 
personality should conceal so virile a passion almost 
seemed to require explanation. 

But the impression was momentary, for that first 
breakfast in Camp permitted no divided atten- 
tions, and I dare swear that the porridge, the 
tea, the Swedish “ flatbread,” and the fried fish 
flavoured with points of frizzled bacon, were better 
than any meal eaten elsewhere that day in the 
whole world. 

The first clear day in a new camp is always a 
furiously busy one, and we soon dropped into the 
routine upon which in large measure the real comfort 
of every one depends. About the cooking-fire, 
greatly improved with stones from the shore, we 
built a high stockade consisting of upright poles 


THE CAMP OF THE DOG 


319 


thickly twined with branches, the roof lined with 
moss and lichen and weighted with rocks, and round 
the interior we made low wooden seats so that we 
could lie round the fire even in rain and eat our meals 
in peace. Paths, too, outlined themselves from tent 
to tent, from the bathing places and the landing 
stage, and a fair division of the island was decided 
upon between the quarters of the men and the 
women. Wood was stacked, awkward trees and 
boulders removed, hammocks slung, and tents 
strengthened. In a word, Camp was established, 
and duties were assigned and accepted as though 
we expected to live on this Baltic island for years to 
come and the smallest detail of the Community life 
was important. 

Moreover, as the Camp came into being, this sense 
of a community developed, proving that we were a 
definite whole, and not merely separate human beings 
living for a while in tents upon a desert island. 
Each fell willingly into the routine. Sangree, as by 
natural selection, took upon himself the cleaning of 
the fish and the cutting of the wood into lengths 
sufficient for a day’s use. And he did it well. The 
pan of water was never without a fish, cleaned and 
scaled, ready to fry for whoever was hungry ; the 
nightly fire never died down for lack of material to 
throw on without going farther afield to search. 

And Timothy, once reverend, caught the fish and 
chopped down the trees. He also assumed responsi- 
bility for the condition of the boat, and did it so 
thoroughly that nothing in the little cutter was ever 
found wanting. And when, for any reason, his 
presence was in demand, the first place to look for 
him was — in the boat, and there, too, he was usually 


320 


JOHN SILENCE 


found, tinkering away with sheets, sails, or rudder 
and singing as he tinkered. 

Nor was the “ reading " neglected ; for most morn- 
ings there came a sound of droning voices from the 
white tent by the raspberry bushes, which signified 
that Sangree, the tutor, and whatever other man 
chanced to be in the party at the time, were hard at 
it with history or the classics. 

And while Mrs. Maloney, also by natural selection, 
took charge of the larder and the kitchen, the mend- 
ing and general supervision of the rough comforts, 
she also made herself peculiarly mistress of the 
megaphone which summoned to meals and carried 
her voice easily from one end of the island to the 
other ; and in her hours of leisure she daubed the 
surrounding scenery on to a sketching block with all 
the honesty and devotion of her determined but 
unreceptive soul. 

Joan, meanwhile, Joan, elusive creature of the 
wilds, became I know not exactly what. She did 
plenty of work in the Camp, yet seemed to have no 
very precise duties. She was everywhere and any- 
where. Sometimes she slept in her tent, sometimes 
under the stars with a blanket. She knew every 
inch of the island and kept turning up in places 
where she was least expected — for ever wandering 
about, reading her books in sheltered corners, making 
little fires on sunless days to “ worship by to the 
gods,” as she put it, ever finding new pools to dive 
and bathe in, and swimming day and night in the 
warm and waveless lagoon like a fish in a huge tank. 
She went bare-legged and bare-footed, with her hair 
down and her skirts caught up to the knees, and if 
ever a human being turned into a jolly savage within 


THE CAMP OF THE DOG 


321 

the compass of a single week, Joan Maloney was 
certainly that human being. She ran wild. 

So completely, too, was she possessed by the strong 
spirit of the place that the little human fear she had 
yielded to so strangely on our arrival seemed to have 
been utterly dispossessed. As I hoped and expected, 
she made no reference to our conversation of the 
first evening. Sangree bothered her with no special 
attentions, and after all they were very little together. 
His behaviour was perfect in that respect, and I, for 
my part, hardly gave the matter another thought. 
Joan was ever a prey to vivid fancies of one kind or 
another, and this was one of them. Mercifully for 
the happiness of all concerned, it had melted away 
before the spirit of busy, active life and deep content 
that reigned over the island. Every one was intensely 
alive, and peace was upon all. 

Meanwhile the effect of the camp-life began to tell. 
Always a searching test of character, its results, 
sooner or later, are infallible, for it acts upon the soul 
as swiftly and surely as the hypo bath upon the 
negative of a photograph. A readjustment of the 
personal forces takes place quickly; some parts of 
the personality go to sleep, others wake up : but the 
first sweeping change that the primitive life brings 
about is that the artificial portions of the character 
shed themselves one after another like dead skins. 
Attitudes and poses that seemed genuine in the city, 
drop away. The mind, like the body, grows quickly 
hard, simple, uncomplex. And in a camp as primi- 
tive and close to nature as ours was, these effects 
became speedily visible. 

Some folk, of course, who talk glibly about the 


21 


322 


JOHN SILENCE 


simple life when it is safely out of reach, betray 
themselves in camp by for ever peering about for the 
artificial excitements of civilisation which they miss. 
Some get bored at once ; some grow slovenly ; some 
reveal the animal in most unexpected fashion ; and 
some, the select few, find themselves in very short 
order and are happy. 

And, in our little party, we could flatter ourselves 
that we all belonged to the last category, so far as 
the general effect was concerned. Only there were 
certain other changes as well, varying with each 
individual, and all interesting to note. 

It was only after the first week or two that these 
changes became marked, although this is the proper 
place, I think, to speak of them. For, having myself 
no other duty than to enjoy a well-earned holiday, I 
used to load my canoe with blankets and provisions 
and journey forth on exploration trips among the 
islands of several days together ; and it was on my 
return from the first of these — when I rediscovered 
the party, so to speak — that these changes first pre- 
sented themselves vividly to me, and in one particular 
instance produced a rather curious impression. 

In a word, then, while every one had grown wilder, 
naturally wilder, Sangree, it seemed to me, had grown 
much wilder, and what I can only call unnaturally 
wilder. He made me think of a savage. 

To begin with, he had changed immensely in mere 
physical appearance, and the full brown cheeks, the 
brighter eyes of absolute health, and the general air 
of vigour and robustness that had come to replace 
his customary lassitude and timidity, had worked 
such an improvement that I hardly knew him for 
the same man. His voice, too, was deeper and his 


THE CAMP OF THE DOG 


323 


manner bespoke for the first time a greater measure 
of confidence in himself. He now had some claims 
to be called nice-looking, or at least to a certain air 
of virility that would not lessen his value in the eyes 
of the opposite sex. 

All this, of course, was natural enough, and most 
welcome. But, altogether apart from this physical 
change, which no doubt had also been going forward 
in the rest of us, there was a subtle note in his 
personality that came to me with a degree of surprise 
that almost amounted to shock. 

And two things — as he came down to welcome me 
and pull up the canoe — leaped up in my mind un- 
bidden, as though connected in some way I could 
not at the moment divine — first, the curious judg- 
ment formed of him by Joan; and secondly, that 
fugitive expression I had caught in his face while 
Maloney was offering up his strange prayer for special 
protection from Heaven. 

The delicacy of manner and feature — to call it by 
no milder term — which had always been a distin- 
guishing characteristic of the man, had been replaced 
by something far more vigorous and decided, that 
yet utterly eluded analysis. The change which im- 
pressed me so oddly was not easy to name. The 
others — singing Maloney, the bustling Bo’sun’s Mate, 
and Joan, that fascinating half-breed of undine 
and salamander — all showed the effects of a life so 
close to nature ; but in their case the change was 
perfectly natural and what was to be expected, 
whereas with Peter Sangree, the Canadian, it was 
something unusual and unexpected. 

It is impossible to explain how he managed 
gradually to convey to my mind the impression that 


324 


JOHN SILENCE 


something in him had turned savage, yet this, more 
or less, is the impression that he did convey. It was 
not that he seemed really less civilised, or that his 
character had undergone any definite alteration, but 
rather that something in him, hitherto dormant, had 
awakened to life. Some quality, latent till now — so 
far, at least, as we were concerned, who, after all, 
knew him but slightly — had stirred into activity and 
risen to the surface of his being. 

And while, for the moment, this seemed as far as 
I could get, it was but natural that my mind should 
continue the intuitive process and acknowledge that 
John Silence, owing to his peculiar faculties, and 
the girl, owing to her singularly receptive tempera- 
ment, might each in a different way have divined 
this latent quality in his soul, and feared its mani- 
festation later. 

On looking back to this painful adventure, too, it 
now seems equally natural that the same process, 
carried to its logical conclusion, should have wakened 
some deep instinct in me that, wholly without direc- 
tion from my will, set itself sharply and persistently 
upon the watch from that very moment. Thence- 
forward the personality of Sangree was never far 
from my thoughts, and I was for ever analysing and 
searching for the explanation that took so long in 
coming. 

“ I declare, Hubbard, you’re tanned like an 
aboriginal, and you look like one, too,” laughed 
Maloney. 

“ And I can return the compliment,” was my reply, 
as we all gathered round a brew of tea to exchange 
news and compare notes. 

And later, at supper, it amused me to observe 


THE CAMP OF THE DOG 


325 


that the distinguished tutor, once clergyman, did not 
eat his food quite as “ nicely ” as he did at home — 
he devoured it; that Mrs. Maloney ate more, and, 
to say the least, with less delay, than was her custom 
in the select atmosphere of her English dining-room ; 
and that while Joan attacked her tin plateful with 
genuine avidity, Sangree, the Canadian, bit and gnawed 
at his, laughing and talking and complimenting the 
cook all the while, and making me think with secret 
amusement of a starved animal at its first meal. 
While, from their remarks about myself, I judged 
that I had changed and grown wild as much as the 
rest of them. 

In this and in a hundred other little ways the 
change showed, ways difficult to define in detail, but 
all proving — not the coarsening effect of leading the 
primitive life, but, let us say, the more direct and 
unvarnished methods that became prevalent. For all 
day long we were in the bath of the elements — wind, 
water, sun — and just as the body became insensible 
to cold and shed unnecessary clothing, the mind grew 
straightforward and shed many of the disguises 
required by the conventions of civilisation. 

And in each, according to temperament and 
character, there stirred the life-instincts that were 
natural, untamed, and, in a sense — savage. 

Ill 

So it came about that I stayed with our island 
party, putting off my second exploring trip from 
day to day, and I think that this far-fetched instinct 
to watch Sangree was really the cause of my 
postponement. 


324 


JOHN SILENCE 


something in him had turned savage, yet this, more 
or less, is the impression that he did convey. It was 
not that he seemed really less civilised, or that his 
character had undergone any definite alteration, but 
rather that something in him, hitherto dormant, had 
awakened to life. Some quality, latent till now — so 
far, at least, as we were concerned, who, after all, 
knew him but slightly — had stirred into activity and 
risen to the surface of his being. 

And while, for the moment, this seemed as far as 
I could get, it was but natural that my mind should 
continue the intuitive process and acknowledge that 
John Silence, owing to his peculiar faculties, and 
the girl, owing to her singularly receptive tempera- 
ment, might each in a different way have divined 
this latent quality in his soul, and feared its mani- 
festation later. 

On looking back to this painful adventure, too, it 
now seems equally natural that the same process, 
carried to its logical conclusion, should have wakened 
some deep instinct in me that, wholly without direc- 
tion from my will, set itself sharply and persistently 
upon the watch from that very moment. Thence- 
forward the personality of Sangree was never far 
from my thoughts, and I was for ever analysing and 
searching for the explanation that took so long in 
coming. 

“ I declare, Hubbard, you’re tanned like an 
aboriginal, and you look like one, too,” laughed 
Maloney. 

“ And I can return the compliment,” was my reply, 
as we all gathered round a brew of tea to exchange 
news and compare notes. 

And later, at supper, it amused me to observe 


THE CAMP OF THE DOG 


32 $ 


that the distinguished tutor, once clergyman, did not 
eat his food quite as “ nicely ” as he did at home — 
he devoured it; that Mrs. Maloney ate more, and, 
to say the least, with less delay, than was her custom 
in the select atmosphere of her English dining-room ; 
and that while Joan attacked her tin plateful with 
genuine avidity, Sangree, the Canadian, bit and gnawed 
at his, laughing and talking and complimenting the 
cook all the while, and making me think with secret 
amusement of a starved animal at its first meal. 
While, from their remarks about myself, I judged 
that I had changed and grown wild as much as the 
rest of them. 

In this and in a hundred other little ways the 
change showed, ways difficult to define in detail, but 
all proving — not the coarsening effect of leading the 
primitive life, but, let us say, the more direct and 
unvarnished methods that became prevalent. For all 
day long we were in the bath of the elements — wind, 
water, sun — and just as the body became insensible 
to cold and shed unnecessary clothing, the mind grew 
straightforward and shed many of the disguises 
required by the conventions of civilisation. 

And in each, according to temperament and 
character, there stirred the life-instincts that were 
natural, untamed, and, in a sense — savage. 

Ill 

So it came about that I stayed with our island 
party, putting off my second exploring trip from 
day to day, and I think that this far-fetched instinct 
to watch Sangree was really the cause of my 
postponement. 


326 


JOHN SILENCE 


For another ten days the life of the Camp pursued 
its even and delightful way, blessed by perfect 
summer weather, a good harvest of fish, fine winds for 
sailing, and calm, starry nights. Maloney’s selfish 
prayer had been favourably received. Nothing came 
to disturb or perplex. There was not even the 
prowling of night animals to vex the rest of Mrs. 
Maloney; for in previous camps it had often been 
her peculiar affliction that she heard the porcupines 
scratching against the canvas, or the squirrels dropping 
fir-cones in the early morning with a sound of minia- 
ture thunder upon the roof of her tent. But on this 
island there was not even a squirrel or a mouse. I 
think two toads and a small and harmless snake were 
the only living creatures that had been discovered 
during the whole of the first fortnight. And these 
two toads in all probability were not two toads, but 
one toad. 

Then, suddenly, came the terror that changed the 
whole aspect of the place — the devastating terror. 

It came, at first, gently, but from the very start 
it made me realise the unpleasant loneliness of our 
situation, our remote isolation in this wilderness of 
sea and rock, and how the islands in this tideless 
Baltic ocean lay about us like the advance guard of a 
vast besieging army. Its entry, as I say, was gentle, 
hardly noticeable, in fact, to most of us: singularly 
undramatic it certainly was. But, then, in actual life 
this is often the way the dreadful climaxes move upon 
us, leaving the heart undisturbed almost to the last 
minute, and then overwhelming it with a sudden rush 
of horror. For it was the custom at breakfast to listen 
patiently while each in turn related the trivial 
adventures of the night — how they slept, whether the 


THE CAMP OF THE DOG 


327 


wind shook their tent, whether the spider on the 
ridge pole had moved, whether they had heard the 
toad, and so forth — and on this particular morning 
Joan, in the middle of a little pause, made a truly 
novel announcement : 

“ In the night I heard the howling of a dog,” she 
said, and then flushed up to the roots of her hair when 
we burst out laughing. For the idea of there being 
a dog on this forsaken island that was only able to 
support a snake and two toads was distinctly ludicrous, 
and I remember Maloney, half-way through his burnt 
porridge, capping the announcement by declaring 
that he had heard a “ Baltic turtle ” in the lagoon, and 
his wife’s expression of frantic alarm before the 
laughter undeceived her. 

But the next morning Joan repeated the story with 
additional and convincing detail. 

“ Sounds of whining and growling woke me,” she 
said, “ and I distinctly heard sniffing under my tent, 
and the scratching of paws.” 

“ Oh, Timothy ! Can it be a porcupine ? ” exclaimed 
the Bo’sun’s Mate with distress, forgetting that 
Sweden was not Canada. 

But the girl’s voice had sounded to me in quite 
another key, and looking up I saw that her father 
and Sangree were staring at her hard. They, too, 
understood that she was in earnest, and had been 
struck by the serious note in her voice. 

“ Rubbish, Joan ! You are always dreaming some- 
thing or other wild,” her father said a little impatiently. 

“ There’s not an animal of any size on the whole 
island,” added Sangree with a puzzled expression. 
He never took his eyes from her face. 

“But there’s nothing to prevent one swimming 


JOHN SILENCE 


328 

over,” I put in briskly, for somehow a sense of 
uneasiness that was not pleasant had woven itself 
into the talk and pauses. “A deer, for instance, 
might easily land in the night and take a look 
round ” 

“ Or a bear ! ” gasped the Bo’sun’s Mate, with a look 
so portentous that we all welcomed the laugh. 

But Joan did not laugh. Instead, she sprang up 
and called to us to follow. 

“There,” she said, pointing to the ground by her 
tent on the side farthest from her mother’s; “there 
are the marks close to my head. You can see for 
yourselves.” 

We saw plainly. The moss and lichen — for earth 
there was hardly any — had been scratched up by 
paws. An animal about the size of a large dog it 
must have been, to judge by the marks. We stood 
and stared in a row. 

“Close to my head,” repeated the girl, looking 
round at us. Her face, I noticed, was very pale, and 
her lip seemed to quiver for an instant. Then she 
gave a sudden gulp — and burst into a flood of tears. 

The whole thing had come about in the brief space 
of a few minutes, and with a curious sense of inevit- 
ableness, moreover, as though it had all been carefully 
planned from all time and nothing could have stopped 
it. It had all been rehearsed before — had actually 
happened before, as the strange feeling sometimes 
has it ; it seemed like the opening movement in some 
ominous drama, and that I knew exactly what would 
happen next. Something of great moment was 
impending. 

For this sinister sensation of coming disaster made 
itself felt from the very beginning, and an atmosphere 


THE CAMP OF THE DOG 


329 

of gloom and dismay pervaded the entire Camp from 
that moment forward. 

I drew Sangree to one side and moved away, while 
Maloney took the distressed girl into her tent, and 
his wife followed them, energetic and greatly flustered. 

For thus, in undramatic fashion, it was that the 
terror I have spoken of first attempted the invasion 
of our Camp, and, trivial and unimportant though it 
seemed, every little detail of this opening scene is 
photographed upon my mind with merciless accuracy 
and precision. It happened exactly as described. 
This was exactly the language used. I see it written 
before me in black and white. I see, too, the faces 
of all concerned with the sudden ugly signature of 
alarm where before had been peace. The terror had 
stretched out, so to speak, a first tentative feeler 
towards us and had touched the hearts of each with 
a horrid directness. And from this moment the 
Camp changed. 

Sangree in particular was visibly upset. He could 
not bear to see the girl distressed, and to hear her 
actually cry was almost more than he could stand. 
The feeling that he had no right to protect her hurt 
him keenly, and I could see that he was itching 
to do something to help, and liked him for it. His 
expression said plainly that he would tear in a 
thousand pieces anything that dared to injure a 
hair of her head. 

We lit our pipes and strolled over in silence to 
the men’s quarters, and it was his odd Canadian 
expression “ Gee whiz ! ” that drew my attention to 
a further discovery. 

“ The brute’s been scratching round my tent too,” 
he cried, as he pointed to similar marks by the door 


330 


JOHN SILENCE 


and I stooped down to examine them. We both 
stared in amazement for several minutes without 
speaking. 

“ Only I sleep like the dead,” he added, straighten- 
ing up again, “ and so heard nothing, I suppose.” 

We traced the paw-marks from the mouth of his 
tent in a direct line across to the girl’s, but nowhere 
else about the Camp was there a sign of the strange 
visitor. The deer, dog, or whatever it was that had 
twice favoured us with a visit in the night, had con- 
fined its attentions to these two tents. And, after all, 
there was really nothing out of the way about these 
visits of an unknown animal, for although our own 
island was destitute of life, we were in the heart of a 
wilderness, and the mainland and larger islands must 
be swarming with all kinds of four-footed creatures, 
and no very prolonged swimming was necessary to 
reach us. In any other country it would not have 
caused a moment’s interest — interest of the kind we 
felt, that is. In our Canadian camps the bears were 
for ever grunting about among the provision bags at 
night, porcupines scratching unceasingly, and chip- 
munks scuttling over everything. 

“ My daughter is overtired, and that’s the truth of 
it,” explained Maloney presently when he rejoined 
us and had examined in turn the other paw-marks. 
“ She’s been overdoing it lately, and camp-life, you 
know, always means a great excitement to her. It’s 
natural enough. If we take no notice she’ll be all 
right.” He paused to borrow my tobacco pouch and 
fill his pipe, and the blundering way he filled it and 
spilled the precious weed on the ground visibly belied 
the calm of his easy language. “ You might take her 
out for a bit of fishing, Hubbard, like a good chap ; 


THE CAMP OF THE DOG 


33i 


she’s hardly up to the long day in the cutter. Show 
her some of the other islands in your canoe, perhaps. 
Eh?” 

And by lunch-time the cloud had passed away as 
suddenly, and as suspiciously, as it had come. 

But in the canoe, on our way home, having till 
then purposely ignored the subject uppermost in our 
minds, she suddenly spoke to me in a way that again 
touched the note of sinister alarm — the note that 
kept on sounding and sounding until finally John 
Silence came with his great vibrating presence and 
relieved it; yes, and even after he came, too, for a 
while. 

“ I’m ashamed to ask it,” she said abruptly, as she 
steered me home, her sleeves rolled up, her hair 
blowing in the wind, “ and ashamed of my silly tears 
too, because I really can’t make out what caused 
them ; but, Mr. Hubbard, I want you to promise me 
not to go off for your long expeditions — just yet. I 
beg it of you.” She was so in earnest that she 
forgot the canoe, and the wind caught it sideways 
and made us roll dangerously. “ I have tried hard 
not to ask this,” she added, bringing the canoe round 
again, “ but I simply can’t help myself.” 

It was a good deal to ask, and I suppose my hesi- 
tation was plain ; for she went on before I could 
reply, and her beseeching expression and intensity of 
manner impressed me very forcibly. 

“ For another two weeks only ” 

“ Mr. Sangree leaves in a fortnight,” I said, seeing 
at once what she was driving at, but wondering if it 
was best to encourage her or not. 

“ If I knew you were to be on the island till then,” 
she said, her face alternately pale and blushing, and 


332 JOHN SILENCE 

her voice trembling a little, “ I should feel so much 
happier.” 

I looked at her steadily, waiting for her to finish. 

“And safer,” she added almost in a whisper; 
“ especially — at night, I mean.” 

“Safer, Joan?” I repeated, thinking I had never 
seen her eyes so soft and tender. She nodded her 
head, keeping her gaze fixed on my face. 

It was really difficult to refuse, whatever my 
thoughts and judgment may have been, and some- 
how I understood that she spoke with good reason, 
though for the life of me I could not have put it 
into words. 

“ Happier — and safer,” she said gravely, the canoe 
giving a dangerous lurch as she leaned forward in 
her seat to catch my answer. Perhaps, after all, the 
wisest way was to grant her request and make light 
of it, easing her anxiety without too much encour- 
aging its cause. 

“All right, Joan, you queer creature; I promise,” 
and the instant look of relief in her face, and the 
smile that came back like sunlight to her eyes, made 
me feel that, unknown to myself and the world, I was 
capable of considerable sacrifice after all. 

“But, you know, there’s nothing to be afraid of,” I 
added sharply ; and she looked up in my face with 
the smile women use when they know we are talking 
idly, yet do not wish to tell us so. 

“ You don’t feel afraid, I know,” she observed 
quietly. 

“ Of course not ; why should I ? ” 

“ So, if you will just humour me this once I — I will 
never ask anything foolish of you again as long as I 
live,” she said gratefully. 


THE CAMP OF THE DOG 


333 


“You have my promise,” was all I could find to say. 

She headed the nose of the canoe for the lagoon 
lying a quarter of a mile ahead, and paddled swiftly ; 
but a minute or two later she paused again and 
stared hard at me with the dripping paddle across 
the thwarts. 

“You’ve not heard anything at night yourself, have 
you ? ” she asked. 

“ I never hear anything at night,” 1 replied shortly, 
“ from the moment I lie down till the moment I get 
up.” 

“ That dismal howling, for instance,” she went on, 
determined to get it out, “ far away at first and then 
getting closer, and stopping just outside the Camp ? ” 

“ Certainly not.” 

“ Because, sometimes I think I almost dreamed it.” 

“ Most likely you did,” was my unsympathetic 
response. 

“ And you don’t think father has heard it either, 
then ? ” 

“ No. He would have told me if he had.” 

This seemed to relieve her mind a little. “ I know 
mother hasn’t,” she added, as if speaking to herself, 
“ for she hears nothing — ever.” 

It was two nights after this conversation that I 
woke out of deep sleep and heard sounds of scream- 
ing. The voice was really horrible, breaking the 
peace and silence with its shrill clamour. In less 
than ten seconds I was half dressed and out of my 
tent. The screaming had stopped abruptly, but I 
knew the general direction, and ran as fast as the 
darkness would allow over to the women’s quarters, 
and on getting close I heard sounds of suppressed 


334 


JOHN SILENCE 


weeping. It was Joan’s voice. And just as I came 
up I saw Mrs. Maloney, marvellously attired, fumbling 
with a lantern. Other voices became audible in the 
same moment behind me, and Timothy Maloney 
arrived, breathless, less than half dressed, and carry- 
ing another lantern that had gone out on the way 
from being banged against a tree. Dawn was just 
breaking, and a chill wind blew in from the sea. 
Heavy black clouds drove low overhead. 

The scene of confusion may be better imagined 
than described. Questions in frightened voices filled 
the air against this background of suppressed weeping. 
Briefly — Joan’s silk tent had been torn, and the girl 
was in a state bordering upon hysterics. Somewhat 
reassured by our noisy presence, however, — for she 
was plucky at heart, — she pulled herself together and 
tried to explain what had happened ; and her broken 
words, told there on the edge of night and morning 
upon this wild island ridge, were oddly thrilling and 
distressingly convincing. 

“ Something touched me and I woke,” she said 
simply, but in a voice still hushed and broken with 
the terror of it, “ something pushing against the tent ; 
I felt it through the canvas. There was the same 
sniffing and scratching as before, and I felt the tent 
give a little as when wind shakes it. I heard 
breathing — very loud, very heavy breathing — and then 
came a sudden great tearing blow, and the canvas 
ripped open close to my face.” 

She had instantly dashed out through the open 
flap and screamed at the top of her voice, thinking 
the creature had actually got into the tent. But 
nothing was visible, she declared, and she heard not 
the faintest sound of an animal making off under 


THE CAMP OF THE HOG 


335 


cover of the darkness. The brief account seemed 
to exercise a paralysing effect upon us all as we 
listened to it. I can see the dishevelled group to this 
day, the wind blowing the women’s hair, and Maloney 
craning his head forward to listen, and his wife, open- 
mouthed and gasping, leaning against a pine tree. 

“ Come over to the stockade and we’ll get the fire 
going,” I said ; “ that’s the first thing,” for we were all 
shaking with the cold in our scanty garments. And 
at that moment Sangree arrived wrapped in a blanket 
and carrying his gun ; he was still drunken with sleep 

“ The dog again,” Maloney explained briefly, fore- 
stalling his questions; “been at Joan’s tent. Torn 
it, by Gad ! this time. It’s time we did something ” 
He went on mumbling confusedly to himself. 

Sangree gripped his gun and looked about swiftly 
in the darkness. I saw his eyes flame in the glare 
of the flickering lanterns. He made a movement as 
though to start out and hunt — and kill. Then his 
glance fell on the girl crouching on the ground, her 
face hidden in her hands, and there leaped into his 
features an expression of savage anger that trans- 
formed them. He could have faced a dozen lions 
with a walking-stick at that moment, and again I 
liked him for the strength of his anger, his self- 
control, and his hopeless devotion. 

But I stopped him going off on a blind and useless 
chase. 

“ Come and help me start the fire, Sangree,” I 
said, anxious also to relieve the girl of our presence ; 
and a few minutes later the ashes, still glowing from 
the night’s fire, had kindled the fresh wood, and there 
was a blaze that warmed us well while it also lit up 
the surrounding trees within a radius of twenty yards. 


336 


JOHN SILENCE 


“ I heard nothing,” he whispered ; “ what in the 
world do you think it is? It surely can’t be only 
a dog!” 

“We’ll find that out later,” I said, as the others 
came up to the grateful warmth ; “ the first thing is 
to make as big a fire as we can.” 

Joan was calmer now, and her mother had put on 
some warmer, and less miraculous, garments. And 
while they stood talking in low voices Maloney and 
I slipped off to examine the tent. There was little 
enough to see, but that little was unmistakable. 
Some animal had scratched up the ground at the 
head of the tent, and with a great blow of a powerful 
paw — a paw clearly provided with good claws — had 
struck the silk and torn it open. There was a hole 
large enough to pass a fist and arm through. 

“It can’t be far away,” Maloney said excitedly. 
“ We’ll organise a hunt at once ; this very minute.” 

We hurried back to the fire, Maloney talking 
boisterously about his proposed hunt. “ There’s 
nothing like prompt action to dispel alarm,” he whis- 
pered in my ear ; and then turned to the rest of us. 

“ We’ll hunt the island from end to end at once,” 
he said, with excitement ; “ that’s what we’ll do. The 
beast can’t be far away. And the Bosun’s Mate and 
Joan must come too, because they can’t be left alone. 
Hubbard, you take the right shore, and you, Sangree, 
the left, and I’ll go in the middle with the women. 
In this way we can stretch clean across the ridge, 
and nothing bigger than a rabbit can possibly escape 
us.” He was extraordinarily excited, I thought. 
Anything affecting Joan, of course, stirred him pro- 
digiously. “ Get your guns and we’ll start the drive 
at once,” he cried. He lit another lantern and 


THE CAMP OF THE DOG 


337 


handed one each to his wife and Joan, and while I 
ran to fetch my gun I heard him singing to himself 
with the excitement of it all. 

Meanwhile the dawn had come on quickly. It 
made the flickering lanterns look pale. The wind, 
too, was rising, and I heard the trees moaning over- 
head and the waves breaking with increasing clamour 
on the shore. In the lagoon the boat dipped and 
splashed, and the sparks from the fire were carried 
aloft in a stream and scattered far and wide. 

We made our way to the extreme end of the 
island, measured our distances carefully, and then 
began to advance. None of us spoke. Sangree and 
I, with cocked guns, watched the shore lines, and 
all within easy touch and speaking distance. It was 
a slow and blundering drive, and there were many 
false alarms, but after the best part of half an hour we 
stood on the farther end, having made the complete 
tour, and without putting up so much as a squirrel. 
Certainly there was no living creature on that island 
but ourselves. 

“ I know what it is ! ” cried Maloney, looking out 
over the dim expanse of grey sea, and speaking with 
the air of a man making a discovery ; “ its a dog 
from one of the farms on the larger islands” — he 
pointed seawards where the archipelago thickened — 
“and it’s escaped and turned wild. Our fires and 
voices attracted it, and it’s probably half starved as 
well as savage, poor brute ! ” 

No one said anything in reply, and he began to 
sing again very low to himself. 

The point where we stood — a huddled, shivering 
group — faced the wider channels that led to the open 
sea and Finland. The grey dawn had broken in 


22 


338 


JOHN SILENCE 


earnest at last, and we could see the racing waves 
with their angry crests of white. The surrounding 
islands showed up as dark masses in the distance, and 
in the east, almost as Maloney spoke, the sun came 
up with a rush in a stormy and magnificent sky of 
red and gold. Against this splashed and gorgeous 
background black clouds, shaped like fantastic and 
legendary animals, filed past swiftly in a tearing 
stream, and to this day I have only to close my eyes 
to see again that vivid and hurrying procession in 
the air. All about us the pines made black splashes 
against the sky. It was an angry sunrise. Rain, 
indeed, had already begun to fall in big drops. 

We turned, as by a common instinct, and, without 
speech, made our way back slowly to the stockade, 
Maloney humming snatches of his songs, Sangree 
in front with his gun, prepared to shoot at a moment’s 
notice, and the women floundering in the rear with 
myself and the extinguished lanterns. 

Yet it was only a dog ! 

Really, it was most singular when one came to 
reflect soberly upon it all. Events, say the occultists, 
have souls, or at least that agglomerate life due to 
the emotions and thoughts of all concerned in them, 
so that cities, and even whole countries, have great 
astral shapes which may become visible to the eye of 
vision ; and certainly here, the soul of this drive — 
this vain, blundering, futile drive — stood somewhere 
between ourselves and — laughed. 

All of us heard that laugh, and all of us tried hard 
to smother the sound, or at least to ignore it. Every 
one talked at once, loudly, and with exaggerated 
decision, obviously trying to say something plausible 
against heavy odds, striving to explain naturally that 


THE CAMP OF THE DOG 


339 


an animal might so easily conceal itself from us, or 
swim away before we had time to light upon its 
trail. For we all spoke of that “ trail ” as though it 
really existed, and we had more to go upon than the 
mere marks of paws about the tents of Joan and 
the Canadian. Indeed, but for these, and the torn 
tent, I think it would, of course, have been pos- 
sible to ignore the existence of this beast intruder 
altogether. 

And it was here, under this angry dawn, as we 
stood in the shelter of the stockade from the pouring 
rain, weary yet so strangely excited — it was here, 
out of this confusion of voices and explanations, that 
— very stealthily — the ghost of something horrible 
slipped in and stood among us. It made all our 
explanations seem childish and untrue; the false 
relation was instantly exposed. Eyes exchanged 
quick, anxious glances, questioning, expressive of 
dismay. There was a sense of wonder, of poignant 
distress, and of trepidation. Alarm stood waiting at 
our elbows. We shivered. 

Then, suddenly, as we looked into each other’s 
faces, came the long, unwelcome pause in which this 
new arrival established itself in our hearts. 

And, without further speech, or attempt at ex- 
planation, Maloney moved off abruptly to mix the 
porridge for an early breakfast; Sangree to clean 
the fish ; myself to chop wood and tend the fire ; 
Joan and her mother to change their wet garments ; 
and, most significant of all, to prepare her mother’s 
tent for its future complement of two. 

Each went to his duty, but hurriedly, awkwardly, 
silently ; and this new arrival, this shape of terror 
and distress stalked, viewless, by the side of each. 


340 


JOHN SILENCE 


“If only I could have traced that dog,” I think was 
the thought in the minds of all. 

But in Camp, where every one realises how im- 
portant the individual contribution is to the comfort 
and well-being of all, the mind speedily recovers 
tone and pulls itself together. 

During the day, a day of heavy and ceaseless rain, 
we kept more or less to our tents, and though there 
were signs of mysterious conferences between the 
three members of the Maloney family, I think that 
most of us slept a good deal and stayed alone 
with his thoughts. Certainly, I did, because when 
Maloney came to say that his wife invited us all 
to a special “ tea ” in her tent, he had to shake 
me awake before I realised that he was there at 
all. 

And by supper-time we were more or less even- 
minded again, and almost jolly. I only noticed that 
there was an undercurrent of what is best described 
as “jumpiness,” and that the merest snapping of a 
twig, or plop of a fish in the lagoon, was sufficient 
to make us start and look over our shoulders. 
Pauses were rare in our talk, and the fire was never 
for one instant allowed to get low. The wind and 
rain had ceased, but the dripping of the branches 
still kept up an excellent imitation of a downpour. 
In particular, Maloney was vigilant and alert, telling 
us a series of tales in which the wholesome humorous 
element was especially strong. He lingered, too, 
behind with me after Sangree had gone to bed, and 
while I mixed myself a glass of hot Swedish punch, 
he did a thing l had never known him do before — he 
mixed one for himself, and then asked me to light 


THE CAMP OF THE DOG 


34i 

him over to his tent. We said nothing on the way, 
but I felt that he was glad of my companionship. 

I returned alone to the stockade, and for a long 
time after that kept the fire blazing, and sat up 
smoking and thinking. I hardly knew why; but 
sleep was far from me for one thing, and for another, 
an idea was taking form in my mind that required 
the comfort of tobacco and a bright fire for its growth. 
I lay against a corner of the stockade seat, listening 
to the wind whispering and to the ceaseless drip-drip 
of the trees. The night, otherwise, was very still, 
and the sea quiet as a lake. I remember that I 
was conscious, peculiarly conscious, of this host of 
desolate islands crowding about us in the darkness, 
and that we were the one little spot of humanity in 
a rather wonderful kind of wilderness. 

But this, I think, was the only symptom that came 
to warn me of highly strung nerves, and it certainly 
was not sufficiently alarming to destroy my peace 
of mind. One thing, however, did come to disturb 
my peace, for just as I finally made ready to go, and 
had kicked the embers of the fire into a last effort, I 
fancied I saw, peering at me round the farther end 
of the stockade wall, a dark and shadowy mass that 
might have been — that strongly resembled, in fact — 
the body of a large animal. Two glowing eyes shone 
for an instant in the middle of it. But the next 
second I saw that it was merely a projecting mass of 
moss and lichen in the wall of our stockade, and the 
eyes were a couple of wandering sparks from the 
dying ashes I had kicked. It was easy enough, too, 
to imagine I saw an animal moving here and there 
between the trees, as I picked my way stealthily to 
my tent. Of course, the shadows tricked me. 


342 


JOHN SILENCE 


And though it was after one o’clock, Maloney’s 
light was still burning, for I saw his tent shining 
white among the pines. 

It was, however, in the short space between 
consciousness and sleep — that time when the body 
is low and the voices of the submerged region tell 
sometimes true — that the idea which had been all 
this while maturing reached the point of an actual 
decision, and I suddenly realised that I had resolved 
to send word to Dr. Silence. For, with a sudden 
wonder that I had hitherto been so blind, the un- 
welcome conviction dawned upon me all at once 
that some dreadful thing was lurking about us on 
this island, and that the safety of at least one of us 
was threatened by something monstrous and unclean 
that was too horrible to contemplate. And, again 
remembering those last words of his as the train 
moved out of the platform, I understood that Dr. 
Silence would hold himself in readiness to come. 

“ Unless you should send for me sooner,” he had said. 

I found myself suddenly wide awake. It is im- 
possible to say what woke me, but it was no gradual 
process, seeing that I jumped from deep sleep to 
absolute alertness in a single instant. I had evi- 
dently slept for an hour and more, for the night 
had cleared, stars crowded the sky, and a pallid 
half-moon just sinking into the sea threw a spectral 
light between the trees. 

I went outside to sniff the air, and stood upright. 
A curious impression that something was astir in 
the Camp came over me, and when I glanced across 
at Sangree’s tent, some twenty feet away, I saw that 
it was moving. He too, then, was awake and restless, 


THE CAMP OF THE DOG 


343 

for I saw the canvas sides bulge this way and that as 
he moved within. 

Then the flap pushed forward. He was coming 
out, like myself, to sniff the air ; and I was not sur- 
prised, for its sweetness after the rain was intoxicating. 
And he came on all fours, just as I had done. I saw 
a head thrust round the edge of the tent. 

And then I saw that it was not Sangree at all. It 
was an animal. And the same instant I realised 
something else too — it was the animal ; and its whole 
presentment for some unaccountable reason was 
unutterably malefic. 

A cry I was quite unable to suppress escaped me, 
and the creature turned on the instant and stared at 
me with baleful eyes. I could have dropped on the 
spot, for the strength all ran out of my body with a 
rush. Something about it touched in me the living 
terror that grips and paralyses. If the mind requires 
but the tenth of a second to form an impression, I 
must have stood there stockstill for several seconds 
while I seized the ropes for support and stared. 
Many and vivid impressions flashed through my mind, 
but not one of them resulted in action, because I was 
in instant dread that the beast any moment would leap 
in my direction and be upon me. Instead, however, 
after what seemed a vast period, it slowly turned its 
eyes from my face, uttered a low whining sound, and 
came out altogether into the open. 

Then, for the first time, I saw it in its entirety and 
noted two things: it was about the size of a large 
dog, but at the same time it was utterly unlike any 
animal that I had ever seen. Also, that the quality 
that had impressed me first as being malefic, was 
really only its singular and original strangeness. 


344 


JOHN SILENCE 


Foolish as it may sound, and impossible as it is for 
me to adduce proof, I can only say that the animal 
seemed to me then to be — not real. 

But all this passed through my mind in a flash, 
almost subconsciously, and before I had time to check 
my impressions, or even properly verify them ; I 
made an involuntary movement, catching the tight 
rope in my hand so that it twanged like a banjo string, 
and in that instant the creature turned the corner 
of Sangree’s tent and was gone into the darkness. 

Then, of course, my senses in some measure returned 
to me, and I realised only one thing: it had been 
inside his tent ! 

I dashed out, reached the door in half a dozen 
strides, and looked in. The Canadian, thank God ! 
lay upon his bed of branches. His arm was stretched 
outside, across the blankets, the fist tightly clenched, 
and the body had an appearance of unusual rigidity 
that was alarming. On his face there was an expres- 
sion of effort, almost of painful effort, so far as the 
uncertain light permitted me to see, and his sleep 
seemed to be very profound. He looked, I thought, 
so stiff, so unnaturally stiff, and in some indefinable 
way, too, he looked smaller — shrunken. 

1 called to him to wake, but called many times in 
vain. Then I decided to shake him, and had already 
moved forward to do so vigorously when there came 
a sound of footsteps padding softly behind me, and I 
felt a stream of hot breath burn my neck as I stooped. 
I turned sharply. The tent door was darkened and 
something silently swept in. I felt a rough and 
shaggy body push past me, and knew that the animal 
had returned. It seemed to leap forward between me 
and Sangree — in fact, to leap upon Sangree, for its 


THE CAMP OF THE DOG 


345 


dark body hid him momentarily from view, and in 
that moment my soul turned sick and coward 
with a horror that rose from the very dregs and 
depth of life, and gripped my existence at its central 
source. 

The creature seemed somehow to melt away into 
him, almost as though it belonged to him and were a 
part of himself, but in the same instant — that instant 
of extraordinary confusion and terror in my mind — it 
seemed to pass over and behind him, and, in some 
utterly unaccountable fashion, it was gone ! And the 
Canadian woke and sat up with a start. 

“Quick! You fool!” I cried, in my excitement, 
“ the beast has been in your tent, here at your very 
throat while you sleep like the dead. Up, man ! Get 
your gun ! Only this second it disappeared over there 
behind your head. Quick ! or Joan ! ” 

And somehow the fact that he was there, wide- 
awake now, to corroborate me, brought the additional 
conviction to my own mind that this was no animal, 
but some perplexing and dreadful form of life that 
drew upon my deeper knowledge, that much reading 
had perhaps assented to, but that had never yet come 
within actual range of my senses. 

He was up in a flash, and out. He was trembling, 
and very white. We searched hurriedly, feverishly, 
but found only the traces of paw-marks passing from 
the door of his own tent across the moss to the 
women’s. And the sight of the tracks about Mrs. 
Maloney’s tent, where Joan now slept, set him in a 
perfect fury. 

“ Do you know what it is, Hubbard, this beast ? ” 
he hissed under his breath at me; “it’s a damned 
wolf, that’s what it is — a wolf lost among the islands, 


JOHN SILENCE 


34 ^ 

and starving to death — desperate. So help me God, 
I believe it’s that ! ” 

He talked a lot of rubbish in his excitement. He 
declared he would sleep by day and sit up every 
night until he killed it. Again his rage touched my 
admiration ; but I got him away before he made 
enough noise to wake the whole Camp. 

“ I have a better plan than that,” I said, watching 
his face closely. “ I don’t think this is anything we 
can deal with. I’m going to send for the only man 
I know who can help. We’ll go to Waxholm this 
very morning and get a telegram through.” 

Sangree stared at me with a curious expression as 
the fury died out of his face and a new look of alarm 
took its place. 

“John Silence,” I said, “will know ” 

“You think it’s something — of that sort?” he 
stammered. 

“ I am sure of it.” 

There was a moment’s pause. “ That’s worse, far 
worse than anything material,” he said, turning visibly 
paler. He looked from my face to the sky, and then 
added with sudden resolution, “Come; the wind’s 
rising. Let’s get off at once. From there you can 
telephone to Stockholm and get a telegram sent 
without delay.” 

I sent him down to get the boat ready, and seized 
the opportunity myself to run and wake Maloney. 
He was sleeping very lightly, and sprang up the 
moment I put my head inside his tent. I told him 
briefly what I had seen, and he showed so little surprise 
that I caught myself wondering for the first time 
whether he himself had seen more going on than he 
had deemed wise to communicate to the rest of us. 


THE CAMP OF TIIE DOG 


347 


He agreed to my plan without a moment’s hesitation, 
and my last words to him were to let his wife and 
daughter think that the great psychic doctor was 
coming merely as a chance visitor, and not with any 
professional interest. 

So, with frying-pan, provisions, and blankets aboard, 
Sangree and I sailed out of the lagoon fifteen minutes 
later, and headed with a good breeze for the direction 
of Waxholm and the borders of civilisation. 


IV 

Although nothing John Silence did ever took me, 
properly speaking, by surprise, it was certainly un- 
expected to find a letter from Stockholm waiting 
for me. “ I have finished my Hungary business,” he 
wrote, “ and am here for ten days. Do not hesitate 
to send if you need me. If you telephone any 
morning from Waxholm I can catch the afternoon 
steamer.” 

My years of intercourse with him were full of 
“coincidences” of this description, and although he 
never sought to explain them by claiming any 
magical system of communication with my mind, I 
have never doubted that there actually existed some 
secret telepathic method by which he knew my 
circumstances and gauged the degree of my need. 
And that this power was independent of time in 
the sense that it saw into the future, always seemed 
to me equally apparent. 

Sangree was as much relieved as I was, and within 
an hour of sunset that very evening we met him on 
the arrival of the little coasting steamer, and carried 
him off in the dinghy to the camp we had prepared 


343 


JOHN SILENCE 


on a neighbouring island, meaning to start for home 
early next morning. 

“Now,” he said, when supper was over and we 
were smoking round the fire, “ let me hear your story.” 
He glanced from one to the other, smiling. 

“You tell it, Mr. Hubbard,” Sangree interrupted 
abruptly, and went off a little way to wash the 
dishes, yet not so far as to be out of earshot. And 
while he splashed with the hot water, and scraped 
the tin plates with sand and moss, my voice, unbroken 
by a single question from Dr. Silence, ran on for the 
next half-hour with the best account I could give of 
what had happened. 

My listener lay on the other side of the fire, his 
face half hidden by a big sombrero; sometimes 
he glanced up questioningly when a point needed 
elaboration, but he uttered no single word till I had 
reached the end, and his manner all through the 
recital was grave and attentive. Overhead, the wash 
of the wind in the pine branches filled in the pauses ; 
the darkness settled down over the sea, and the stars 
came out in thousands, and by the time I finished the 
moon had risen to flood the scene with silver. Yet, 
by his face and eyes, I knew quite well that the doctor 
was listening to something he had expected to hear, 
even if he had not actually anticipated all the details. 

“You did well to send for me,” he said very low, 
with a significant glance at me when I finished ; “ very 
well,” — and for one swift second his eye took in San- 
gree, — “ for what we have to deal with here is nothing 
more than a werewolf— rare enough, I am glad to 
say, but often very sad, and sometimes very terrible.” 

I jumped as though I had been shot, but the next 
second was heartily ashamed of my want of control ; 


THE CAMP OF THE DOG 


349 


for this brief remark, confirming as it did my own 
worst suspicions, did more to convince me of the 
gravity of the adventure than any number of questions 
or explanations. It seemed to draw close the circle 
about us, shutting a door somewhere that locked us 
in with the animal and the horror, and turning the 
key. Whatever it was had now to be faced and 
dealt with. 

“No one has been actually injured so far?” he 
asked aloud, but in a matter-of-fact tone that lent 
reality to grim possibilities. 

“ Good heavens, no ! ” cried the Canadian, throwing 
down his dish-cloths and coming forward into the 
circle of firelight. “ Surely there can be no question 
of this poor starved beast injuring anybody, can 
there ? ” 

His hair straggled untidily over his forehead, and 
there was a gleam in his eyes that was not all 
reflection from the fire. His words made me turn 
sharply. We all laughed a little, short, forced laugh. 

“ I trust not, indeed,” Dr. Silence said quietly. 
“ But what makes you think the creature is starved ? ” 
He asked the question with his eyes straight on the 
other’s face. The prompt question explained to me 
why I had started, and I waited with just a tremor 
of excitement for the reply. 

Sangree hesitated a moment, as though the 
question took him by surprise. But he met the 
doctor’s gaze unflinchingly across the fire, and with 
complete honesty. 

“ Really,” he faltered, with a little shrug of the 
shoulders, “ I can hardly tell you. The phrase 
seemed to come out of its own accord. I have felt 
from the beginning that it was in pain and — starved, 


350 


JOHN SILENCE 


though why I felt this never occurred to me till you 
asked.” 

“You really know very little about it, then?” said 
the other, with a sudden gentleness in his voice. 

“ No more than that,” Sangree replied, looking at 
him with a puzzled expression that was unmistakably 
genuine. “ In fact, nothing at all, really,” he added, 
by way of further explanation. 

“ I am glad of that,” I heard the doctor murmur 
under his breath, but so low that I only just caught 
the words, and Sangree missed them altogether, as 
evidently he was meant to do. 

“And now,” he cried, getting on his feet and 
shaking himself with a characteristic gesture, as 
though to shake out the horror and the mystery, 
“let us leave the problem till to-morrow and enjoy 
this wind and sea and stars. I’ve been living lately 
in the atmosphere of many people, and feel that I 
want to wash and be clean. I propose a swim and 
then bed. Who’ll second me?” And two minutes 
later we were all diving from the boat into cool, 
deep water, that reflected a thousand moons as the 
waves broke away from us in countless ripples. 

We slept in blankets under the open sky, Sangree 
and I taking the outside places, and were up before 
sunrise to catch the dawn wind. Helped by this 
early start we were half-way home by noon, and then 
the wind shifted to a few points behind us so that we 
fairly ran. In and out among a thousand islands, 
down narrow channels where we lost the wind, out 
into open spaces where we had to take in a reef, 
racing along under a hot and cloudless sky, we flew 
through the very heart of the bewildering and loneLy 
scenery. 


THE CAMP OF THE DOG 


3Si 


“A real wilderness,” cried Dr. Silence from his 
seat in the bows where he held the jib sheet. His 
hat was off, his hair tumbled in the wind, and his 
lean brown face gave him the touch of an Oriental. 
Presently he changed places with Sangree, and came 
down to talk with me by the tiller. 

“ A wonderful region, all this world of islands,” he 
said, waving his hand to the scenery rushing past us, 
“ but doesn’t it strike you there’s something lacking ? ” 

“ It’s — hard,” I answered, after a moment’s reflec- 
tion. “ It has a superficial, glittering prettiness, 
without ” I hesitated to find the word I wanted. 

John Silence nodded his head with approval. 

“ Exactly,” he said. “ The picturesqueness of stage 
scenery that is not real, not alive. It’s like a land- 
scape by a clever painter, yet without true imagina- 
tion. Soulless — that’s the word you wanted.” 

“ Something like that,” I answered, watching the 
gusts of wind on the sails. “ Not dead so much, as 
without soul. That’s it.” 

“ Of course,” he went on, in a voice calculated, it 
seemed to me, not to reach our companion in the bows, 
" to live long in a place like this — long and alone 
— might bring about a strange result in some men.” 

I suddenly realised he was talking with a purpose 
and pricked up my ears. 

“ There’s no life here. These islands are mere 
dead rocks pushed up from below the sea — not living 
land; and there’s nothing really alive on them. 
Even the sea, this tideless, brackish sea, neither 
salt water nor fresh, is dead. It’s all a pretty image 
of life without the real heart and soul of life. To a 
man with too strong desires who came here and lived 
close to nature, strange things might happen.” 


352 


JOHN SILENCE 


“ Let her out a bit,” I shouted to Sangree, who was 
coming aft. “ The wind’s gusty and we’ve got hardly 
any ballast.” 

He went back to the bows, and Dr. Silence 
continued — 

“ Here, I mean, a long sojourn would lead to 
deterioration, to degeneration. The place is utterly 
unsoftened by human influences, by any humanising 
associations of history, good or bad. This landscape 
has never awakened into life ; it’s still dreaming in 
its primitive sleep.” 

“ In time,” I put in, “ you mean a man living here 
might become brutal ? ” 

“ The passions would run wild, selfishness become 
supreme, the instincts coarsen and turn savage 
probably.” 

“ But ” 

“In other places just as wild, parts of Italy for 
instance, where there are other moderating influences, 
it could not happen. The character might grow 
wild, savage too in a sense, but with a human 
wildness one could understand and deal with. 
But here, in a hard place like this, it might be 
otherwise.” He spoke slowly, weighing his words 
carefully. 

I looked at him with many questions in my eyes, 
and a precautionary cry to Sangree to stay in the 
fore part of the boat, out of earshot. 

“ First of all there would come callousness to pain, 
and indifference to the rights of others. Then the 
soul would turn savage, not from passionate human 
causes, or with enthusiasm, but by deadening down 
into a kind of cold, primitive, emotionless savagery — 
by turning, like the landscape, soulless.” 


THE CAMP OF THE HOG 


353 

“ And a man with strong desires, you say, might 
change ? ” 

“Without being aware of it, yes; he might turn 
savage, his instincts and desires turn animal. And 
if” — he lowered his voice and turned for a moment 
towards the bows, and then continued in his most 
weighty manner — “ owing to delicate health or other 
predisposing causes, his Double — you know what I 
mean, of course — his etheric Body of Desire, or astral 
body, as some term it — that part in which the 
emotions, passions and desires reside — if this, I say, 
were for some constitutional reason loosely joined to 
his physical organism, there might well take place 
an occasional projection ” 

Sangree came aft with a sudden rush, his face 
aflame, but whether with wind or sun, or with what 
he had heard, I cannot say. In my surprise I let the 
tiller slip and the cutter gave a great plunge as she 
came sharply into the wind and flung us all together 
in a heap on the bottom. Sangree said nothing, but 
while he scrambled up and made the jib sheet fast 
my companion found a moment to add to his un- 
finished sentence the words, too low for any ear 
but mine — 

“ Entirely unknown to himself, however.” 

We righted the boat and laughed, and then Sangree 
produced the map and explained exactly where we 
were. Far away on the horizon, across an open 
stretch of water, lay a blue cluster of islands with 
our crescent-shaped home among them and the safe 
anchorage of the lagoon. An hour with this wind 
would get us there comfortably, and while Dr. Silence 
and Sangree fell into conversation, I sat and pondered 
over the strange suggestions that had just been put 

23 


354 


JOHN SILENCE 


into my mind concerning the “ Double/’ and the 
possible form it might assume when dissociated 
temporarily from the physical body. 

The whole way home these two chatted, and John 
Silence was as gentle and sympathetic as a woman. 
I did not hear much of their talk, for the wind grew 
occasionally to the force of a hurricane and the sails 
and tiller absorbed my attention ; but I could see 
that Sangree was pleased and happy, and was pour- 
ing out intimate revelations to his companion in the 
way that most people did — when John Silence wished 
them to do so. 

But it was quite suddenly, while I sat all intent 
upon wind and sails, that the true meaning of 
Sangree’s remark about the animal flared up in me 
with its full import. For his admission that he knew 
it was in pain and starved was in reality nothing more 
or less than a revelation of his deeper self. It was 
in the nature of a confession. He was speaking of 
something that he knew positively, something that 
was beyond question or argument, something that 
had to do directly with himself. “ Poor starved 
beast ” he had called it in words that had “ come out 
of their own accord,” and there had not been the 
slightest evidence of any desire to conceal or explain 
away. He had spoken instinctively — from his heart, 
and as though about his own self. 

And half an hour before sunset we raced through 
the narrow opening of the lagoon and saw the smoke 
of the dinner-fire blowing here and there among the 
trees, and the figures of Joan and the Bo’sun’s 
Mate running down to meet us at the landing- 
stage. 


THE CAMP OE THE DOG 


355 


V 

Everything changed from the moment John 
Silence set foot on that island ; it was like the effect 
produced by calling in some big doctor, some great 
arbiter of life and death, for consultation. The sense 
of gravity increased a hundredfold. Even inanimate 
objects took upon themselves a subtle alteration, 
for the setting of the adventure — this deserted bit of 
sea with its hundreds of uninhabited islands — some- 
how turned sombre. An element that was mysteri- 
ous, and in a sense disheartening, crept unbidden 
into the severity of grey rock and dark pine forest 
and took the sparkle from the sunshine and the 
sea. 

I, at least, was keenly aware of the change, for my 
whole being shifted, as it were, a degree higher, 
becoming keyed up and alert. The figures from the 
background of the stage moved forward a little into 
the light — nearer to the inevitable action. In a word 
this man’s arrival intensified the whole affair. 

And, looking back down the years to the time 
when all this happened, it is clear to me that he had 
a pretty sharp idea of the meaning of it from the 
very beginning. How much he knew beforehand 
by his strange divining powers, it is impossible to 
say, but from the moment he came upon the scene 
and caught within himself the note of what was 
going on amongst us, he undoubtedly held the true 
solution of the puzzle and had no need to ask 
questions. And this certitude it was that set him in 
such an atmosphere of power and made us all look 
to him instinctively ; for he took no tentative steps, 
made no false moves, and while the rest of us 


356 


JOHN SILENCE 


floundered he moved straight to the climax. He 
was indeed a true diviner of souls. 

I can now read into his behaviour a good deal that 
puzzled me at the time, for though I had dimly 
guessed the solution, I had no idea how he would 
deal with it. And the conversations I can reproduce 
almost verbatim, for, according to my invariable 
habit, I kept full notes of all he said. 

To Mrs. Maloney, foolish and dazed ; to Joan, 
alarmed, yet plucky ; and to the clergyman, moved 
by his daughter’s distress below his usual shallow 
emotions, he gave the best possible treatment in the 
best possible way, yet all so easily and simply as 
to make it appear naturally spontaneous. For he 
dominated the Bo’sun’s Mate, taking the measure of 
her ignorance with infinite patience ; he keyed up 
Joan, stirring her courage and interest to the highest 
point for her own safety ; and the Reverend Timothy 
he soothed and comforted, while obtaining his 
implicit obedience, by taking him into his confidence, 
and leading him gradually to a comprehension of 
the issue that was bound to follow. 

And Sangree — here his wisdom was most wisely 
calculated — he neglected outwardly because inwardly 
he was the object of his unceasing and most con- 
centrated attention. Under the guise of apparent 
indifference his mind kept the Canadian under con- 
stant observation. 

There was a restless feeling in the Camp that 
evening and none of us lingered round the fire after 
supper as usual. Sangree and I busied ourselves 
with patching up the torn tent for our guest and with 
finding heavy stones to hold the ropes, for Dr. Silence 
insisted on having it pitched on the highest point of 


THE CAMP OF THE DOG 


357 


the island ridge, just where it was most rocky and 
there was no earth for pegs. The place, moreover, 
was midway between the men’s and women’s tents, 
and, of course, commanded the most comprehensive 
view of the Camp. 

“ So that if your dog comes,” he said simply, “ I 
may be able to catch him as he passes across.” 

The wind had gone down with the sun and an 
unusual warmth lay over the island that made sleep 
heavy, and in the morning we assembled at a late 
breakfast, rubbing our eyes and yawning. The cool 
north wind had given way to the warm southern air 
that sometimes came up with haze and moisture 
across the Baltic, bringing with it the relaxing 
sensations that produced enervation and listlessness. 

And this may have been the reason why at first I 
failed to notice that anything unusual was about, and 
why I was less alert than normally; for it was not 
till after breakfast that the silence of our little party 
struck me and I discovered that Joan had not yet 
put in an appearance. And then, in a flash, the last 
heaviness of sleep vanished and I saw that Maloney 
was white and troubled and his wife could not hold 
a plate without trembling. 

A desire to ask questions was stopped in me by a 
swift glance from Dr. Silence, and I suddenly under- 
stood in some vague way that they were waiting till 
Sangree should have gone. How this idea came to 
me I cannot determine, but the soundness of the 
intuition was soon proved, for the moment he moved 
off to his tent, Maloney looked up at me and began 
to speak in a low voice. 

“ You slept through it all,” he half whispered 

“ Through what ? ” I asked, suddenly thrilled 


353 


JOHN SILENCE 


with the knowledge that something dreadful had 
happened. 

“We didn’t wake you for fear of getting the whole 
Camp up,” he went on, meaning, by the Camp, I 
supposed, Sangree. “ It was just before dawn when 
the screams woke me.” 

“ The dog again ? ” I asked, with a curious sinking 
of the heart. 

“ Got right into the tent,” he went on, speaking 
passionately but very low, “ and woke my wife by 
scrambling all over her. Then she realised that Joan 
was struggling beside her. And, by God ! the beast 
had torn her arm ; scratched all down the arm she 
was, and bleeding.” 

“Joan injured?” I gasped. 

“ Merely scratched — this time,” put in John Silence, 
speaking for the first time ; “ suffering more from 
shock and fright than actual wounds.” 

“ Isn’t it a mercy the doctor was here,” said Mrs. 
Maloney, looking as if she would never know calmness 
again. “ I think we should both have been killed.” 

“It has been a most merciful escape,” Maloney 
said, his pulpit voice struggling with his emotion. 
“But, of course, we cannot risk another — we must 
strike Camp and get away at once ” 

“ Only poor Mr. Sangree must not know what has 
happened. He is so attached to Joan and would be 
so terribly upset,” added the Bo’sun’s Mate dis- 
tractedly, looking all about in her terror. 

“ It is perhaps advisable that Mr. Sangree should 
not know what has occurred,” Dr. Silence said with 
quiet authority, “but I think, for the safety of all 
concerned, it will be better not to leave the island 
just now.” He spoke with great decision and 


THE CAMP OF THE DOG 


359 

Maloney looked up and followed his words 
closely. 

“If you will agree to stay here a few days longer, 
I have no doubt we can put an end to the attentions 
of your strange visitor, and incidentally have the 
opportunity of observing a most singular and interest- 
ing phenomenon ” 

“ What ! ” gasped Mrs. Maloney, “ a phenomenon ? 
— you mean that you know what it is ? ” 

“ I am quite certain I know what it is,” he replied 
very low, for we heard the footsteps of Sangree 
approaching, “ though I am not so certain yet as to 
the best means of dealing with it. But in any case 
it is not wise to leave precipitately ” 

“Oh, Timothy, does he think it’s a devil ?” 

cried the Bo’sun’s Mate in a voice that even the 
Canadian must have heard. 

“In my opinion,” continued John Silence, looking 
across at me and the clergyman, “ it is a case of 
modern lycanthropy with other complications that 

may ” He left the sentence unfinished, for Mrs. 

Maloney got up with a jump and fled to her tent 
fearful she might hear a worse thing, and at that 
moment Sangree turned the corner of the stockade 
and came into view. 

“ There are footmarks all round the mouth of my 
tent,” he said with excitement. “The animal has 
been here again in the night. Dr. Silence, you 
really must come and see them for yourself. They’re 
as plain on the moss as tracks in snow.” 

But later in the day, while Sangree went off in 
the canoe to fish the pools near the larger islands, 
and Joan still lay, bandaged and resting, in her tent, 
Dr. Silence called me and the tutor and proposed a 


360 


JOHN SILENCE 


walk to the granite slabs at the far end. Mrs. 
Maloney sat on a stump near her daughter, and 
busied herself energetically with alternate nursing 
and painting. 

“ We’ll leave you in charge,” the doctor said with 
a smile that was meant to be encouraging, “and 
when you want us for lunch, or anything, the mega- 
phone will always bring us back in time.” 

For, though the very air was charged with strange 
emotions, every one talked quietly and naturally as 
with a definite desire to counteract unnecessary 
excitement. 

“ I’ll keep watch,” said the plucky Bo’sun’s Mate, 
“ and meanwhile I find comfort in my work.” She 
was busy with the sketch she had begun on the day 
after our arrival. “ For even a tree,” she added 
proudly, pointing to her little easel, “ is a symbol of 
the divine, and the thought makes me feel safer.” 
We glanced for a moment at a daub which was 
more like the symptom of a disease than a symbol of 
the divine — and then took the path round the lagoon. 

At the far end we made a little fire and lay round 
it in the shadow of a big boulder. Maloney stopped 
his humming suddenly and turned to his companion. 

“And what do you make of it all?” he asked 
abruptly. 

“ In the first place,” replied John Silence, making 
himself comfortable against the rock, “ it is of human 
origin, this animal ; it is undoubted lycanthropy.” 

His words had the effect precisely of a bombshell. 
Maloney listened as though he had been struck. 

“You puzzle me utterly,” he said, sitting up closer 
and staring at him. 

“ Perhaps,” replied the other, “ but if you’ll listen 


THE CAMP OF THE DOG 


3<5i 


to me for a few moments you may be less puzzled at 
the end— or more. It depends how much you know. 
Let me go further and say that you have under- 
estimated, or miscalculated, the effect of this primitive 
wild life upon all of you.” 

“ In what way ? ” asked the clergyman, bristling a 
trifle. 

“ It is strong medicine for any town-dweller, and 
for some of you it has been too strong. One of 
you has gone wild.” He uttered these last words 
with great emphasis. 

“ Gone savage,” he added, looking from one to 
the other. 

Neither of us found anything to reply. 

“To say that the brute has awakened in a man is 
not a mere metaphor always,” he went on presently. 

“ Of course not ! ” 

“But, in the sense I mean, may have a very 
literal and terrible significance,” pursued Dr. Silence. 
“ Ancient instincts that no one dreamed of, least of 
all their possessor, may leap forth •” 

“Atavism can hardly explain a roaming animal 
with teeth and claws and sanguinary instincts,” 
interrupted Maloney with impatience. 

“ The term is of your own choice,” continued the 
doctor equably, “ not mine, and it is a good example 
of a word that indicates a result while it conceals 
the process; but the explanation of this beast that 
haunts your island and attacks your daughter is of 
far deeper significance than mere atavistic tendencies, 
or throwing back to animal origin, which I suppose 
is the thought in your mind.” 

“You spoke just now of lycanthropy,” said 
Maloney, looking bewildered and anxious to keep 


362 


JOHN SILENCE 


to plain facts evidently, “ I think I have come across 
the word, but really — really — it can have no actual 
significance to-day, can it? These superstitions of 

mediaeval times can hardly ” 

He looked round at me with his jolly red face, and 
the expression of astonishment and dismay on it 
would have made me shout with laughter at any 
other time. Laughter, however, was never farther 
from my mind than at this moment when I listened 
to Dr. Silence as he carefully suggested to the 
clergyman the very explanation that had gradually 
been forcing itself upon my own mind. 

“ However mediaeval ideas may have exaggerated 
the idea is not of much importance to us now,” he 
said quietly, “when we are face to face with a 
modern example of what, I take it, has always been 
a profound fact. For the moment let us leave the 
name of any one in particular out of the matter and 
consider certain possibilities.” 

We all agreed with that at any rate. There was 
no need to speak of Sangree, or of any one else, 
until we knew a little more. 

“ The fundamental fact in this most curious case,” 

he went on, “ is that the ‘ Double * of a man ” 

“You mean the astral body? I’ve heard of that, 
of course,” broke in Maloney with a snort of triumph. 

“No doubt,” said the other, smiling, “no doubt 
you have; — that this Double, or fluidic body of a 
man, as I was saying, has the power under certain 
conditions of projecting itself and becoming visible to 
others. Certain training will accomplish this, and 
certain drugs likewise ; illnesses, too, that ravage the 
body may produce temporarily the result that death 
produces permanently, and let loose this counterpart 


THE CAMP OF THE DOG 363 

of a human being and render it visible to the sight 
of others. 

“Every one, of course, knows this more or less 
to-day ; but it is not so generally known, and prob- 
ably believed by none who have not witnessed it, 
that this fluidic body can, under certain conditions, 
assume other forms than human, and that such other 
forms may be determined by the dominating thought 
and wish of the owner. For this Double, or astral 
body as you call it, is really the seat of the passions, 
emotions and desires in the psychical economy. It 
is the Passion Body ; and, in projecting itself, it can 
often assume a form that gives expression to the 
overmastering desire that moulds it; for it is com- 
posed of such tenuous matter that it lends itself 
readily to the moulding by thought and wish.” 

“ I follow you perfectly,” said Maloney, looking as 
if he would much rather be chopping firewood else- 
where and singing. 

“ And there are some persons so constituted,” the 
doctor went on with increasing seriousness, “ that the 
fluid body in them is but loosely associated with the 
physical, persons of poor health as a rule, yet often 
of strong desires and passions ; and in these persons 
it is easy for the Double to dissociate itself during 
deep sleep from their system, and, driven forth by 
some consuming desire, to assume an animal form 
and seek the fulfilment of that desire.” 

There, in broad daylight, I saw Maloney deliber- 
ately creep closer to the fire and heap the wood on. 
We gathered in to the heat, and to each other, and 
listened to Dr. Silence’s voice as it mingled with the 
swish and whirr of the wind about us, and the falling 
of the little waves. 


3^4 


JOHN SILENCE 


" For instance, to take a concrete example,” he 
resumed ; “ suppose some young man, with the 
delicate constitution I have spoken of, forms an 
overpowering attachment to a young woman, yet 
perceives that it is not welcomed, and is man enough 
to repress its outward manifestations. In such a case, 
supposing his Double be easily projected, the very 
repression of his love in the daytime would add to 
the intense force of his desire when released in deep 
sleep from the control of his will, and his fluidic body 
might issue forth in monstrous or animal shape and 
become actually visible to others. And, if his devo- 
tion were dog-like in its fidelity, yet concealing the 
fires of a fierce passion beneath, it might well assume 
the form of a creature that seemed to be half dog, j 
half wolf ” 

“ A werewolf, you mean ? ” cried Maloney, pale ! 
to the lips as he listened. 

John Silence held up a restraining hand. “ A were- 
wolf,” he said, “ is a true psychical fact of profound 
significance, however absurdly it may have been 
exaggerated by the imaginations of a superstitious 
peasantry in the days of unenlightenment, for a were- 
wolf is nothing but the savage, and possibly sanguin- 
ary, instincts of a passionate man scouring the world 
in his fluidic body, his passion body, his body of desire. 
As in the case at hand, he may not know it ” 

“ It is not necessarily deliberate, then ? ” Maloney 
put in quickly, with relief. 

“ It is hardly ever deliberate. It is the desires 

released in sleep from the control of the will finding 
a vent. In all savage races it has been recognised 
and dreaded, this phenomenon styled ‘ Wehr Wolf/ 
but to-day it is rare. And it is becoming rarer still, 


THE CAMP OF THE DOG 


365 

for the world grows tame and civilised, emotions have 
become refined, desires lukewarm, and few men have 
savagery enough left in them to generate impulses 
of such intense force, and certainly not to project 
them in animal form.” 

“ By Gad ! ” exclaimed the clergyman breathlessly, 
and with increasing excitement, “then I feel I 
must tell you — what has been given to me in confid- 
ence — that Sangree has in him an admixture of 
savage blood — of Red Indian ancestry ” 

“Let us stick to our supposition of a man as 
described,” the doctor stopped him calmly, “ and let 
us imagine that he has in him this admixture of 
savage blood ; and further, that he is wholly unaware 
of his dreadful physical and psychical infirmity ; and 
that he suddenly finds himself leading the primitive 
life together with the object of his desires ; with the 
result that the strain of the untamed wild-man in his 
blood ” 

“ Red Indian, for instance,” from Maloney. 

“Red Indian, perfectly,” agreed the doctor; “the 
result, I say, that this savage strain in him is 
awakened and leaps into passionate life. What then ? ” 

He looked hard at Timothy Maloney, and the 
clergyman looked hard at him. 

“The wild life such as you lead it here on this 
island, for instance, might quickly awaken his 'savage 
instincts — his buried instincts — and with profoundly 
disquieting results.” 

“ You mean his Subtle Body, as you call it, might 
issue forth automatically in deep sleep and seek 
the object of its desire? ” I said, coming to Maloney’s 
aid, who was finding it more and more difficult to 
get words. 


3^6 


JOHN SILENCE 


“ Precisely ; — yet the desire of the man remaining 
utterly unmalefic — pure and wholesome in every 
sense ” 

“ Ah ! ” I heard the clergyman gasp. 

“ The lover’s desire for union run wild, run savage, 
tearing its way out in primitive, untamed fashion, 
I mean,” continued the doctor, striving to make 
himself clear to a mind bounded by conventional 
thought and knowledge ; “ for the desire to possess, 
remember, may easily become importunate, and, 
embodied in this animal form of the Subtle Body 
which acts as its vehicle, may go forth to tear in 
pieces all that obstructs, to reach to the very heart of 
the loved object and seize it. Au fond , it is nothing 
more than the aspiration for union, as I said — the 
splendid and perfectly clean desire to absorb utterly 
into itself ■” 

He paused a moment and looked into Maloney’s 
eyes. 

“To bathe in the very heart’s blood of the one 
desired,” he added with grave emphasis. 

The fire spurted and crackled and made me start, 
but Maloney found relief in a genuine shudder, and I 
saw him turn his head and look about him from the 
sea to the trees. The wind dropped just at that 
moment and the doctor’s words rang sharply through 
the stillness. 

“ Then it might even kill ? ” stammered the clergy- 
man presently in a hushed voice, and with a little 
forced laugh by way of protest that sounded quite 
ghastly. 

“In the last resort it might kill,” repeated Dr. 
Silence. Then, after another pause, during which 
he was clearly debating how much or how little it 


THE CAMP OF THE DOG 


367 


was wise to give to his audience, he continued : “ And 
if the Double does not succeed in getting back 
to its physical body, that physical body would wake 
an imbecile — an idiot — or perhaps never wake at 
all.” 

Maloney sat up and found his tongue. 

“You mean that if this fluid animal thing, or 
whatever it is, should be prevented getting back, the 
man might never wake again ? ” he asked, with shak- 
ing voice. 

“ He might be dead,” replied the other calmly. 
The tremor of a positive sensation shivered in the 
air about us. 

“ Then isn’t that the best way to cure the fool — 

the brute ? ” thundered the clergyman, half rising 

to his feet. 

“ Certainly it would be an easy and undiscover- 
able form of murder,” was the stern reply, spoken 
as calmly as though it were a remark about the 
weather. 

Maloney collapsed visibly, and I gathered the wood 
over the fire and coaxed up a blaze. 

“ The greater part of the man’s life — of his vital 
forces — goes out with this Double,” Dr. Silence 
resumed, after a moment’s consideration, “and a 
considerable portion of the actual material of his 
physical body. So the physical body that remains 
behind is depleted, not only of force, but of matter. 
You would see it small, shrunken, dropped together, 
just like the body of a materialising medium at a 
stance. Moreover, any mark or injury inflicted upon 
this Double will be found exactly reproduced by 
the phenomenon of repercussion upon the shrunken 
physical body lying in its trance ” 


3^3 


JOHN SILENCE 


“ An injury inflicted upon the one you say would 
be reproduced also on the other? ” repeated Maloney, 
his excitement growing again. 

“ Undoubtedly,” replied the other quietly; “for there 
exists all the time a continuous connection between 
the physical body and the Double — a connection of 
matter, though of exceedingly attenuated, possibly 
of etheric, matter. The wound travels , so to speak, 
from one to the other, and if this connection were 
broken the result would be death.” 

“ Death,” repeated Maloney to himself, “ death ! ” 
He looked anxiously at our faces, his thoughts 
evidently beginning to clear. 

“And this solidity?” he asked presently, after 
a general pause ; “ this tearing of tents and flesh ; this 
howling, and the marks of paws? You mean that 
the Double ?” 

“Has sufficient material drawn from the, depleted 
body to produce physical results ? Certainly ! ” the 
doctor took him up. “ Although to explain at this 
moment such problems as the passage of matter 
through matter would be as difficult as to explain 
how the thought of a mother can actually break the 
bones of the child unborn.” 

Dr. Silence pointed out to sea, and Maloney, looking 
wildly about him, turned with a violent start. I saw 
a canoe, with Sangree in the stern-seat, slowly coming 
into view round the farther point. His hat was off, 
and his tanned face for the first time appeared to me 
— to us all, I think — as though it were the face of 
some one else. He looked like a wild man. Then 
he stood up in the canoe to make a cast with the 
rod, and he looked for all the world like an Indian. 

I recalled the expression of his face as I had seen it 


THE CAMP OF THE DOG 


3^9 


once or twice, notably on that occasion of the 
evening prayer, and an involuntary shudder ran 
down my spine. 

At that very instant he turned and saw us where 
we lay, and his face broke into a smile, so that his 
teeth showed white in the sun. He looked in his 
element, and exceedingly attractive. He called out 
something about his fish, and soon after passed out 
of sight into the lagoon. 

For a time none of us said a word. 

“ And the cure ? ” ventured Maloney at length. 

“Is not to quench this savage force,” replied Dr. 
Silence, “ but to steer it better, and to provide other 
outlets. This is the solution of all these problems 
of accumulated force, for this force is the raw material 
of usefulness, and should be increased and cherished, 
not by separating it from the body by death, but by 
raising it to higher channels. The best and quickest 
cure of all,” he went on, speaking very gently and 
with a hand upon the clergyman’s arm, “ is to lead it 
towards its object, provided that object is not un- 
alterably hostile — to let it find rest where ” 

He stopped abruptly, and the eyes of the two men 
met in a single glance of comprehension. 

“Joan?” Maloney exclaimed, under his breath. 

“Joan!” replied John Silence. 

We all went to bed early. The day had been 
unusually warm, and after sunset a curious hush 
descended on the island. Nothing was audible but 
that faint, ghostly singing which is inseparable from 
a pine-wood even on the stillest day — a low, search- 
ing sound, as though the wind had hair and trailed 
it o’er the world. 

24 


370 


JOHN SILENCE 


With the sudden cooling of the atmosphere a sea 
fog began to form. It appeared in isolated patches 
over the water, and then these patches slid together 
and a white wall advanced upon us. Not a breath 
of air stirred ; the firs stood like flat metal outlines ; 
the sea became as oil. The whole scene lay as 
though held motionless by some huge weight in the 
air; and the flames from our fire — the largest we 
had ever made — rose upwards, straight as a church 
steeple. 

As I followed the rest of our party tent-wards, 
having kicked the embers of the fire into safety, the 
advance guard of the fog was creeping slowly among 
the trees, like white arms feeling their way. Mingled 
with the smoke was the odour of moss and soil and 
bark, and the peculiar flavour of the Baltic, half salt 
half brackish, like the smell of an estuary at low 
water. 

It is difficult to say why it seemed to me that this 
deep stillness masked an intense activity ; perhaps 
in every mood lies the suggestion of its opposite, so 
that I became aware of the contrast of furious 
energy, for it was like moving through the deep 
pause before a thunderstorm, and I trod gently lest 
by breaking a twig or moving a stone I might set 
the whole scene into some sort of tumultuous move- 
ment. Actually, no doubt, it was nothing more 
than a result of overstrung nerves. 

There was no more question of undressing and 
going to bed than there was of undressing and going 
to bathe. Some sense in me was alert and expectant. 
I sat in my tent and waited. And at the end 
of half an hour or so my waiting was justified, for the 
canvas suddenly shivered, and some one tripped over 


THE CAMP OF THE DOG 


37i 

the ropes that held it to the earth. John Silence 
came in. 

The effect of his quiet entry was singular and 
prophetic: it was just as though the energy lying 
behind all this stillness had pressed forward to the 
edge of action. This, no doubt, was merely the 
quickening of my own mind, and had no other justi- 
fication ; for the presence of John Silence always 
suggested the near possibility of vigorous action, and, 
as a matter of fact, he came in with nothing more 
than a nod and a significant gesture. 

He sat down on a corner of my ground-sheet, and 
I pushed the blanket over so that he could cover his 
legs. He drew the flap of the tent after him and 
settled down, but hardly had he done so when the 
canvas shook a second time, and in blundered 
Maloney. 

“ Sitting in the dark ? ” he said self-consciously, 
pushing his head inside, and hanging up his lantern 
on the ridge-pole nail. “ I just looked in for a smoke. 
I suppose ” 

He glanced round, caught the eye of Dr. Silence, 
and stopped. He put his pipe back into his pocket 
and began to hum softly — that under-breath hum- 
ming of a nondescript melody I knew so well and 
had come to hate. 

Dr. Silence leaned forward, opened the lantern and 
blew the light out. “ Speak low,” he said, “ and 
don’t strike matches. Listen for sounds and 
movements about the Camp, and be ready to 
follow me at a moment’s notice.” There was light 
enough to distinguish our faces easily, and I 
saw Maloney glance again hurriedly at both of 
us. 


372 


JOHN SILENCE 


“ Is the Camp asleep ? ” the doctor asked presently, 
whispering. 

“ Sangree is,” replied the clergyman, in a voice 
equally low. “ I can’t answer for the women ; I 
think they’re sitting up.” 

“ That’s for the best.” And then he added : “ I 
wish the fog would thin a bit and let the moon 
through ; later — we may want it.” 

“It is lifting now, I think,” Maloney whispered 
back. “ It’s over the tops of the trees already.” 

I cannot say what it was in this commonplace 
exchange of remarks that thrilled. Probably 
Maloney’s swift acquiescence in the doctor’s mood 
had something to do with it ; for his quick obedience 
certainly impressed me a good deal. But, even 
without that slight evidence, it was clear that each 
recognised the gravity of the occasion, and under- 
stood that sleep was impossible and sentry duty was 
the order of the night. 

“ Report to me,” repeated John Silence once again, 
“ the least sound, and do nothing precipitately.” 

He shifted across to the mouth of the tent and 
raised the flap, fastening it against the pole so that 
he could see out. Maloney stopped humming and 
began to force the breath through his teeth with a 
kind of faint hissing, treating us to a medley of 
church hymns and popular songs of the day. 

Then the tent trembled as though some one had 
touched it. 

“ That’s the wind rising,” whispered the clergyman, 
and pulled the flap open as far as it would go. A 
waft of cold damp air entered and made us shiver, 
and with it came a sound of the sea as the first 
wave washed its way softly along the shores. 


THE CAMP OF THE DOG 


373 


“It’s got round to the north,” he added, and 
following his voice came a long-drawn whisper that 
rose from the whole island as the trees sent forth a 
sighing response. “The fog’ll move a bit now. I 
can make out a lane across the sea already.” 

“ Hush ! ” said Dr. Silence, for Maloney’s voice 
had risen above a whisper, and we settled down 
again to another long period of watching and waiting, 
broken only by the occasional rubbing of shoulders 
against the canvas as we shifted our positions, and 
the increasing noise of waves on the outer coast-line 
of the island. And over all whirred the murmur of 
wind sweeping the tops of the trees like a great harp, 
and the faint tapping on the tent as drops fell from 
the branches with a sharp pinging sound. 

We had sat for something over an hour in this 
way, and Maloney and I were finding it increasingly 
hard to keep awake, when suddenly Dr. Silence rose 
to his feet and peered out. The next minute he was 
gone. 

Relieved of the dominating presence, the clergyman 
thrust his face close into mine. “ I don’t much care 
for this waiting game,” he whispered, “but Silence 
wouldn’t hear of my sitting up with the others; he 
said it would prevent anything happening if I did ” 

“ He knows,” I answered shortly. 

“No doubt in the world about that,” he whispered 
back ; “ it’s this ‘ Double ’ business, as he calls it, or 
else it’s obsession as the Bible describes it. But it’s 
bad, whichever it is, and I’ve got my Winchester 
outside ready cocked, and I brought this too.” He 
shoved a pocket Bible under my nose. At one time 
in his life it had been his inseparable companion. 

“ One’s useless and the other’s dangerous,” I replied 


374 


JOHN SILENCE 


under my breath, conscious of a keen desire to laugh, 
and leaving him to choose. “ Safety lies in following 
our leader ” 

“ I’m not thinking of myself,” he interrupted 
sharply; “only, if anything happens to Joan to-night 
I’m going to shoot first — and pray afterwards ! ” 

Maloney put the book back into his hip-pocket, and 
peered out of the doorway. “ What is he up to now, 
in the devil’s name, I wonder ! ” he added ; “ going 
round Sangree’s tent and making gestures. How 
weird he looks disappearing in and out of the fog.” 

“Just trust him and wait,” I said quickly, for the 
doctor was already on his way back. “ Remember, 
he has the knowledge, and knows what he’s about. 
I’ve been with him through worse cases than this.” 

Maloney moved back as Dr. Silence darkened the. 
doorway and stooped to enter. 

“ His sleep is very deep,” he whispered, seating 
himself by the door again. “ He’s in a cataleptic 
condition, and the Double may be released any 
minute now. But I’ve taken steps to imprison it 
in the tent, and it can’t get out till I permit it. Be 
on the watch for signs of movement.” Then he 
looked hard at Maloney. “But no violence, or 
shooting, remember, Mr. Maloney, unless you want 
a murder on your hands. Anything done to the 
Double acts by repercussion upon the physical body. 
You had better take out the cartridges at once.” 

His voice was stern. The clergyman went out, 
and I heard him emptying the magazine of his rifle. 
When he returned he sat nearer the door than before, 
and from that moment until we left the tent he never 
once took his eyes from the figure of Dr. Silence, 
silhouetted there against sky and canvas. 


THE CAMP OF THE DOG 


375 


And, meanwhile, the wind came steadily over the 
sea and opened the mist into lanes and clearings, 
driving it about like a living thing. 

It must have been well after midnight when a low 
booming sound drew my attention ; but at first the 
sense of hearing was so strained that it was im- 
possible exactly to locate it, and I imagined it was 
the thunder of big guns far out at sea carried to 
us by the rising wind. Then Maloney, catching hold 
of my arm and leaning forward, somehow brought 
the true relation, and I realised the next second that 
it was only a few feet away. 

“ Sangree’s tent,” he exclaimed in a loud and 
startled whisper. 

I craned my head round the corner, but at^first the 
effect of the fog was so confusing that every patch of 
white driving about before the wind looked like a 
moving tent and it was some seconds before I discovered 
the one patch that held steady. Then I saw that it was 
shaking all over, and the sides, flapping as much as 
the tightness of the ropes allowed, were the cause of 
the booming sound we had heard. Something alive 
was tearing frantically about inside, banging against 
the stretched canvas in a way that made me think of 
a great moth dashing against the walls and ceiling 
of a room. The tent bulged and rocked. 

“It’s trying to get out, by Jupiter!” muttered the 
clergyman, rising to his feet and turning to the side 
where the unloaded rifle lay. I sprang up too, 
hardly knowing what purpose was in my mind, but 
anxious to be prepared for anything. John Silence, 
however, was before us both, and his figure slipped 
past and blocked the doorway of the tent. And 
there was some quality in his voice next minute 


376 


JOHN SILENCE 


when he began to speak that brought our minds 
instantly to a state of calm obedience. 

“ First — the women’s tent,” he said low, looking 
sharply at Maloney, “ and if I need your help, I’ll 
call.” 

The clergyman needed no second bidding. He 
dived past me and was out in a moment. He was 
labouring evidently under intense excitement. I 
watched him picking his way silently over the slippery 
ground, giving the moving tent a wide berth, and pre- 
sently disappearing among the floating shapes of fog. 

Dr. Silence turned to me. “You heard those 
footsteps about half an hour ago ? ” he asked signifi- 
cantly. 

“ I heard nothing.” 

“ They were extraordinarily soft — almost the 
soundless tread of a wild creature. But now, follow 
me closely,” he added, “ for we must waste no time 
if I am to save this poor man from his affliction 
and lead his werewolf Double to its rest. And, 
unless I am much mistaken” — he peered at me 
through the darkness, whispering with the utmost 
distinctness — “Joan and Sangree are absolutely 
made for one another. And I think she knows it 
too — just as well as he does.” 

My head swam a little as I listened, but at the 
same time something cleared in my brain and I 
saw that he was right. Yet it was all so weird and 
incredible, so remote from the commonplace facts 
of life as commonplace people know them; and 
more than once it flashed upon me that the whole 
scene — people, words, tents, and all the rest of it — 
were delusions created by the intense excitement 
of my own mind somehow, and that suddenly the 


THE CAMP OF THE DOG 


377 

sea-fog would clear off and the world become 
normal again. 

The cold air from the sea stung our cheeks 
sharply as we left the close atmosphere of the little 
crowded tent. The sighing of the trees, the waves 
breaking below on the rocks, and the lines and 
patches of mist driving about us seemed to create 
the momentary illusion that the whole island had 
broken loose and was floating out to sea like a 
mighty raft. 

The doctor moved just ahead of me, quickly and 
silently ; he was making straight for the Canadian’s 
tent where the sides still boomed and shook as the 
creature of sinister life raced and tore about im- 
patiently within. A little distance from the door 
he paused and held up a hand to stop me. We 
were, perhaps, a dozen feet away. 

“ Before I release it, you shall see for yourself,” he 
said, “that the reality of the werewolf is beyond 
all question. The matter of which it is composed is, 
of course, exceedingly attenuated, but you are 
partially clairvoyant — and even if it is not dense 
enough for normal sight you will see something.” 

He added a little more I could not catch. The 
fact was that the curiously strong vibrating atmos- 
phere surrounding his person somewhat confused 
my senses. It was the result, of course, of his 
intense concentration of mind and forces, and per- 
vaded the entire Camp and all the persons in it. 
And as I watched the canvas shake and heard it 
boom and flap I heartily welcomed it. For it was 
also protective. 

At the back of Sangree’s tent stood a thin group 
of pine trees, but in front and at the sides the 


373 


JOHN SILENCE 


ground was comparatively clear. The flap was 
wide open and any ordinary animal would have 
been out and away without the least trouble. Dr. 
Silence led me up to within a few feet, evidently 
careful not to advance beyond a certain limit, and 
then stooped down and signalled to me to do the 
same. And looking over his shoulder I saw the 
interior lit faintly by the spectral light reflected 
from the fog, and the dim blot upon the balsam 
boughs and blankets signifying Sangree ; while over 
him, and round him, and up and down him, flew the 
dark mass of " something ” on four legs, with pointed 
muzzle and sharp ears plainly visible against the 
tent sides, and the occasional gleam of fiery eyes 
and white fangs. 

I held my breath and kept utterly still, inwardly 
and outwardly, for fear, I suppose, that the creature 
would become conscious of my presence; but the 
distress I felt went far deeper than the mere sense 
of personal safety, or the fact of watching something 
so incredibly active and real. I became keenly 
aware of the dreadful psychic calamity it involved. 
The realisation that Sangree lay confined in that 
narrow space with this species of monstrous pro- 
jection of himself — that he was wrapped there in the 
cataleptic sleep, all unconscious that this thing 
was masquerading with his own life and energies — 
added a distressing touch of horror to the scene. 
In all the cases of John Silence — and they were 
many and often terrible — no other psychic affliction 
has ever, before or since, impressed me so convinc- 
ingly with the pathetic impermanence of the human 
personality, with its fluid nature, and with the 
alarming possibilities of its transformations. 


THE CAMP OF THE HOG 


379 


“ Come,” he whispered, after we had watched for 
some minutes the frantic efforts to escape from the 
circle of thought and will that held it prisoner, 
“ come a little farther away while I release it.” 

We moved back a dozen yards or so. It was like 
a scene in some impossible play, or in some 
ghastly and oppressive nightmare from which I 
should presently awake to find the blankets all 
heaped up upon my chest. 

By some method undoubtedly mental, but which, 
in my confusion and excitement, I failed to under- 
stand, the doctor accomplished his purpose, and the 
next minute I heard him say sharply under his 
breath, “ It’s out ! Now, watch ! ” 

At this very moment a sudden gust from the 
sea blew aside the mist, so that a lane opened to 
the sky, and the moon, ghastly and unnatural as 
the effect of stage limelight, dropped down in a 
momentary gleam upon the door of Sangree’s tent, 
and I perceived that something had moved forward 
from the interior darkness and stood clearly defined 
upon the threshold. And, at the same moment, the 
tent ceased its shuddering and held still. 

There, in the doorway, stood an animal, with neck 
and muzzle thrust forward, its head poking into the 
night, its whole body poised in that attitude of 
intense rigidity that precedes the spring into 
freedom, the running leap of attack. It seemed to 
be about the size of a calf, leaner than a mastiff, yet 
more squat than a wolf, and I can swear that I saw 
the fur ridged sharply upon its back. Then its 
upper lip slowly lifted, and I saw the whiteness of 
its teeth. 

Surely no human being ever stared as hard as I 


380 


JOHN SILENCE 


did in those next few minutes. Yet, the harder 
I stared the clearer appeared the amazing and 
monstrous apparition. For, after all, it was Sangree 
— and yet it was not Sangree. It was the head and 
face of an animal, and yet it was the face of Sangree : 
the face of a wild dog, a wolf, and yet his face. The 
eyes were sharper, narrower, more fiery, yet they 
were his eyes — his eyes run wild; the teeth were 
longer, whiter, more pointed — yet they were his 
teeth, his teeth grown cruel ; the expression was 
flaming, terrible, exultant — yet it was his expression 
carried to the border of savagery — his expression as 
I had already surprised it more than once, only 
dominant now, fully released from human constraint, 
with the mad yearning of a hungry and importunate 
soul. It was the soul of Sangree, the long sup- 
pressed, deeply loving Sangree, expressed in its 
single and intense desire — pure utterly and utterly 
wonderful. 

Yet, at the same time, came the feeling that it 
was all an illusion. I suddenly remembered the 
extraordinary changes the human face can undergo 
in circular insanity, when it changes from melancholia 
to elation; and I recalled the effect of hascheesh, 
which shows the human countenance in the form of 
the bird or animal to which in character it most 
approximates; and for a moment I attributed this 
mingling of Sangrees face with a wolf to some kind 
of similar delusion of the senses. I was mad, 
deluded, dreaming! The excitement of the day, 
and this dim light of stars and bewildering mist 
combined to trick me. I had been amazingly 
imposed upon by some false wizardry of the senses. 
It was all absurd and fantastic ; it would pass. 


THE CAMP OF THE DOG 


38 


And then, sounding across this sea of mental 
confusion like a bell through a fog, came the voice of 
John Silence bringing me back to a consciousness 
of the reality of it all — 

“ Sangree — in his Double ! ” 

And when I looked again more calmly, I plainly 
saw that it was indeed the face of the Canadian, but 
his face turned animal, yet mingled with the brute 
expression a curiously pathetic look like the soul 
seen sometimes in the yearning eyes of a dog, — 
the face of an animal shot with vivid streaks of 
the human. 

The doctor called to him softly under his breath — 

“ Sangree ! Sangree, you poor afflicted creature ! 
Do you know me ? Can you understand what it is 
you’re doing in your ‘ Body of Desire ’ ? ” 

For the first time since its appearance the creature 
moved. Its ears twitched and it shifted the weight 
of its body on to the hind legs. Then, lifting its 
head and muzzle to the sky, it opened its long 
jaws and gave vent to a dismal and prolonged 
howling. 

But, when I heard that howling rise to heaven, the 
breath caught and strangled in my throat and it 
seemed that my heart missed a beat ; for, though 
the sound was entirely animal, it was at the same time 
entirely human. But, more than that, it was the cry 
I had so often heard in the Western States of 
America where the Indians still fight and hunt and 
struggle — it was the cry of the Redskin ! 

“ The Indian blood ! ” whispered John Silence, when 
I caught his arm for support ; “ the ancestral cry.” 

And that poignant, beseeching cry, that broken 
human voice, mingling with the savage howl of the 


382 


JOHN SILENCE 


brute beast, pierced straight to my very heart and 
touched there something that no music, no voice, 
passionate or tender, of man, woman or child has 
ever stirred before or since for one second into life. 
It echoed away among the fog and the trees and 
lost itself somewhere out over the hidden sea. And 
some part of myself — something that was far more 
than the mere act of intense listening — went out with 
it, and for several minutes I lost consciousness of my 
surroundings and felt utterly absorbed in the pain of 
another stricken fellow-creature. 

Again the voice of John Silence recalled me to 
myself. 

“ Hark ! ” he said aloud. “ Hark ! ” 

His tone galvanised me afresh. We stood listen- 
ing side by side. 

Far across the island, faintly sounding through 
the trees and brushwood, came a similar, answering 
cry. Shrill, yet wonderfully musical, shaking the 
heart with a singular wild sweetness that defies 
description, we heard it rise and fall upon the 
night air. 

“ It’s across the lagoon,” Dr. Silence cried, but this 
time in full tones that paid no tribute to caution. 
“ It’s Joan ! She’s answering him ! ” 

Again the wonderful cry rose and fell, and that 
same instant the animal lowered its head, and, 
muzzle to earth, set off on a swift easy canter that 
took it off into the mist and out of our sight 
like a thing of wind and vision. 

The doctor made a quick dash to the door of 
Sangree’s tent, and, following close at his heels, I 
peered in and caught a momentary glimpse of the 
small, shrunken body lying upon the branches but 


THE CAMP OF THE DOG 


383 


half covered by the blankets — the cage from which 
most of the life, and not a little of the actual 
corporeal substance, had escaped into that other 
form of life and energy, the body of passion and 
desire. 

By another of those swift, incalculable processes 
which at this stage of my apprenticeship I failed 
often to grasp, Dr. Silence reclosed the circle about 
the tent and body. 

“ Now it cannot return till I permit it,” he said, 
and the next second was off at full speed into the 
woods, with myself close behind him. I had already 
had some experience of my companion's ability to 
run swiftly through a dense wood, and I now had 
the further proof of his power almost to see in the 
dark. For, once we left the open space about the 
tents, the trees seemed to absorb all the remaining 
vestiges of light, and I understood that special 
sensibility that is said to develop in the blind — the 
sense of obstacles. 

And twice as we ran we heard the sound of that 
dismal howling drawing nearer and nearer to the 
answering faint cry from the point of the island 
whither we were going. 

Then, suddenly, the trees fell away, and we 
emerged, hot and breathless, upon the rocky point 
where the granite slabs ran bare into the sea. 
It was like passing into the clearness of open 
day. And there, sharply defined against sea and 
sky, stood the figure of a human being. It was 
Joan. 

I at once saw that there was something about her 
appearance that was singular and unusual, but it 
was only when we had moved quite close that I 


3^4 


JOHN SILENCE 


recognised what caused it. For while the lips wore 
a smile that lit the whole face with a happiness 
I had never seen there before, the eyes themselves 
were fixed in a steady, sightless stare as though 
they were lifeless and made of glass. 

I made an impulsive forward movement, but Dr. 
Silence instantly dragged me back. 

“ No,” he cried, “ don’t wake her ! ” 

“ What do you mean ? ” I replied aloud, struggling 
in his grasp. 

“She’s asleep. It’s somnambulistic. The shock 
might injure her permanently.” 

I turned and peered closely into his face. He 
was absolutely calm. I began to understand a 
little more, catching, I suppose, something of his 
strong thinking. 

“Walking in her sleep, you mean?” 

He nodded. “She’s on her way to meet him. 
From the very beginning he must have drawn her — 
irresistibly.” 

“ But the torn tent and the wounded flesh ? ” 

“When she did not sleep deep enough to enter 
the somnambulistic trance he missed her — he went 
instinctively and in all innocence to seek her out — 
with the result, of course, that she woke and was 
terrified ” 

“ Then in their heart of hearts they love ? ” I asked 
finally. 

John Silence smiled his inscrutable smile. “Pro- 
foundly,” he answered, “and as simply as only 
primitive souls can love. If only they both come 
to realise it in their normal waking states his Double 
will cease these nocturnal excursions. He will be 
cured, and at rest.” 


THE CAMP OF THE DOG 385 

The words had hardly left his lips when there 
was a sound of rustling branches on our left, and 
the very next instant the dense brushwood parted 
where it was darkest and out rushed the swift form 
of an animal at full gallop. The noise of feet was 
scarcely audible, but in that utter stillness I heard 
the heavy panting breath and caught the swish of 
the low bushes against its sides. It went straight 
towards Joan — and as it went the girl lifted her 
head and turned to meet it. And the same instant 
a canoe that had been creeping silently and unob- 
served round the inner shore of the lagoon, emerged 
from the shadows and defined itself upon the water 
with a figure at the middle thwart. It was Maloney. 

It was only afterwards I realised that we were 
invisible to him where we stood against the dark 
background of trees; the figures of Joan and the 
animal he saw plainly, but not Dr. Silence and myself 
standing just beyond them. He stood up in the 
canoe and pointed with his right arm. I saw some- 
thing gleam in his hand. 

“Stand aside, Joan girl, or you’ll get hit,” he 
shouted, his voice ringing horribly through the deep 
stillness, and the same instant a pistol-shot cracked 
out with a burst of flame and smoke, and the figure 
of the animal, with one tremendous leap into the 
air, fell back in the shadows and disappeared like 
a shape of night and fog. Instantly, then, Joan 
opened her eyes, looked in a dazed fashion about 
her, and pressing both hands against her heart, fell 
with a sharp cry into my arms that were just in 
time to catch her. 

And an answering cry sounded across the lagoon 
— thin, wailing, piteous. It came from Sangree’s tent. 

25 


386 


JOHN SILENCE 


“ Fool ! ” cried Dr. Silence, “ you’ve wounded 
him ! ” and before we could move or realise quite 
what it meant, he was in the canoe and half-way 
across the lagoon. 

Some kind of similar abuse came in a torrent 
from my lips too — though I cannot remember the 
actual words — as I cursed the man for his disobedi- 
ence and tried to make the girl comfortable on the 
ground. But the clergyman was more practical. 
He was spreading his coat over her and dashing 
water on her face. 

“ It’s not Joan I’ve killed at any rate,” I heard 
him mutter as she turned and opened her eyes and 
smiled faintly up in his face. “ I swear the bullet 
went straight” 

Joan stared at him ; she was still dazed and 
bewildered, and still imagined herself with the com- 
panion of her trance. The strange lucidity of the 
somnambulist still hung over her brain and mind, 
though outwardly she appeared troubled and confused. 

“ Where has he gone to? He disappeared so 
suddenly, crying that he was hurt,” she asked, 
looking at her father as though she did not recognise 
him. “And if they’ve done anything to him — they have 
done it to me too — for he is more to me than ” 

Her words grew vaguer and vaguer as she 
returned slowly to her normal waking state, and 
now she stopped altogether, as though suddenly 
aware that she had been surprised into telling secrets. 
But all the way back, as we carried her carefully 
through the trees, the girl smiled and murmured 
Sangree’s name and asked if he was injured, until it 
finally became clear to me that the wild soul of the 
one had called to the wild soul of the other and in 


THE CAMP OF THE DOG 


387 


the secret depths of their beings the call had been 
heard and understood. John Silence was right. In 
the abyss of her heart, too deep at first for recognition, 
the girl loved him, and had loved him from the very 
beginning. Once her normal waking consciousness 
recognised the fact they would leap together like 
twin flames, and his affliction would be at an end ; his 
intense desire would be satisfied ; he would be cured. 

And in Sangree’s tent Dr. Silence and I sat up for 
the remainder of the night — this wonderful and 
haunted night that had shown us such strange 
glimpses of a new heaven and a new hell — for the 
Canadian tossed upon his balsam boughs with high, 
fever in his blood, and upon each cheek a dark and 
curious contusion showed, throbbing with severe pain 
although the skin was not broken and there was no 
outward and visible sign of blood. 

“ Maloney shot straight, you see,” whispered Dr. 
Silence to me after the clergyman had gone to his 
tent, and had put Joan to sleep beside her mother, who, 
by the way, had never once awakened. “ The bullet 
must have passed clean through the face, for both 
cheeks are stained. He’ll wear these marks all his 
life — smaller, but always there. They’re the most 
curious scars in the world, these scars transferred by 
repercussion from an injured Double. They’ll remain 
visible until just before his death, and then with the 
withdrawal of the subtle body they will disappear 
finally.” 

His words mingled in my dazed mind with the 
sighs of the troubled sleeper and the crying of the 
wind about the tent. Nothing seemed to paralyse 
my powers of realisation so much as these twin stains 
of mysterious significance upon the face before me. 


388 


JOHN SILENCE 


It was odd, too, how speedily and easily the Camp 
resigned itself again to sleep and quietness, as 
though a stage curtain had suddenly dropped 
down upon the action and concealed it ; and 
nothing contributed so vividly to the feeling that 
I had been a spectator of some kind of visionary 
drama as the dramatic nature of the change in the 
girl’s attitude. 

Yet, as a matter of fact, the change had not been 
so sudden and revolutionary as appeared. Under- 
neath, in those remoter regions of consciousness where 
the emotions, unknown to their owners, do secretly 
mature, and owe thence their abrupt revelation to 
some abrupt psychological climax, there can be no 
doubt that Joan’s love for the Canadian had been 
growing steadily and irresistibly all the time. It had 
now rushed to the surface so that she recognised it ; 
that was all. 

And it has always seemed to me that the presence 
of John Silence, so potent, so quietly efficacious, 
produced an effect, if one may say so, of a psychic 
forcing-house, and hastened incalculably the bring- 
ing together of these two “ wild ” lovers. In that 
sudden awakening had occurred the very psycho- 
logical climax required to reveal the passionate 
emotion accumulated below. The deeper knowledge 
had leaped across and transferred itself to her 
ordinary consciousness, and in that shock the 
collision of the personalities had shaken them to the 
depths and shown her the truth beyond all possibility 
of doubt. 

“ He’s sleeping quietly now,” the doctor said, inter- 
rupting my reflections. “ If you will watch alone for 
a bit I’ll go to Maloney’s tent and help him to arrange 


THE CAMP OF THE DOG 


389 


his thoughts.” He smiled in anticipation of that 
“ arrangement.” “ He’ll never quite understand how 
a wound on the Double can transfer itself to the 
physical body, but at least I can persuade him that 
the less he talks and ‘ explains ’ tomorrow, the sooner 
the forces will run their natural course now to peace 
and quietness.” 

He went away softly, and with the removal of 
his presence Sangree, sleeping heavily, turned over 
and groaned with the pain of his broken head. 

And it was in the still hour just before the dawn, 
when all the islands were hushed, the wind and sea 
still dreaming, and the stars visible through clearing 
mists, that a figure crept silently over the ridge and 
reached the door of the tent where I dozed beside the 
sufferer, before I was aware of its presence. The flap 
was cautiously lifted a few inches and in looked — 
Joan. 

That same instant Sangree woke and sat up on his 
bed of branches. He recognised her before I could 
say a word, and uttered a low cry. It was pain and 
joy mingled, and this time all human. And the girl 
too was no longer walking in her sleep, but fully 
aware of what she was doing. I was only just 
able to prevent him springing from his blankets. 

“Joan, Joan!” he cried, and in a flash she 
answered him, “ I’m here — I’m with you always 
now,” and had pushed past me into the tent and 
flung herself upon his breast 

“I knew you would come to me in the end,” I 
heard him whisper. 

“ It was all too big for me to understand at 
first,” she murmured, “and for a long time I was 
frightened ” 


390 


JOHN SILENCE 


“ But not now ! ” he cried louder ; " you don’t feel 

afraid now of — of anything that’s in me ” 

“ I fear nothing,” she cried, “ nothing, nothing ! ” 

I led her outside again. She looked steadily 
into my face with eyes shining and her whole 
being transformed. In some intuitive way, surviv- 
ing probably from the somnambulism, she knew or 
guessed as much as I knew. 

“You must talk tomorrow with John Silence,” 
I said gently, leading her towards her own tent. 
“He understands everything.” 

I left her at the door, and as I went back softly 
to take up my place of sentry again with the 
Canadian, I saw the first streaks of dawn lighting 
up the far rim of the sea behind the distant 
islands. 

And, as though to emphasise the eternal closeness 
of comedy to tragedy, two small details rose out 
of the scene and impressed me so vividly that I 
remember them to this very day. For in the 
tent where I had just left Joan, all aquiver with 
her new happiness, there rose plainly to my ears 
the grotesque sounds of the Bo’sun’s Mate heavily 
snoring, oblivious of all things in heaven or hell; 
and from Maloney’s tent, so still was the night, 
where I looked across and saw the lantern’s glow, 
there came to me, through the trees, the monotonous 
rising and falling of a human voice that was beyond 
question the sound of a man praying to his God. 


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